SHERWOOD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Sandy Hoyt is still finding her possessions, thought to be lost and scattered across fields and counties by the Union City tornado.
A drone, a piece of a pontoon boat and, improbably, a bottle of pills that turned up seventy miles away.
"It's been a lot of busy work," Hoyt said. "Cleaning up, trying to find contractors, putting in quotes and bids."
Three months ago, Hoyt lost her house in the deadly Union City tornado. She may have come close to losing her life, too, as the structure collapsed on her and her family.
"It felt like eternity," Hoyt said to FOX 17 at the time. "When you're laying under debris and you can't find your loved ones or your pets, time is nothing. It's almost as if it stands still."
A gentler wind now blows down Prairie Rose Lane, the gravel road on the northern shore of Union Lake that Hoyt and her neighbors call home. Still, normal life has not yet returned.
"This, out of the destruction, shall rise again," Hoyt said to me on Friday.
Hoyt and her husband plan to build a new home where their old one once stood. They've been living in a motor home for the past three months and have temporarily put many of their possessions in a pair of storage units. They hope to move back to Union Lake by the end of the year and say many of their neighbors are working to do the same.
"It's been a very slow process, but once it starts happening, you're going to see life back down on the street," Hoyt said.
A pair of fishing tournaments have already happened on the lake this spring, a sign of progress for the body of water that was once littered with debris.
Hoyt and her husband have a new pontoon boat, too, complete with a tribute to Bill Akers and Keri Johnson, two of the three people who were killed in the tornado.
"When we take the pontoon out, at least Keri and Bill will be forever with us," she said. "They will forever be out here on the lake."
