Ocean Ridge Plantation residents remember deadly tornado three years later

OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. (WECT) - If you drive around the Ocean Ridge Plantation neighborhood today, you might not ever realize the trauma that the residents went through on Valentine’s Day three years ago.

“It looked like something you couldn’t even imagine, the level of devastation [then] and now it’s beautiful,” neighbor Donna Wald said.

On Feb. 15, 2021, an EF-3 tornado hit the neighborhood. Neighbor Liz Weinhold remembered thinking the storm seemed strange that night.

“I remember the lightning and the sounds of the thunder were very weird,” Weinhold said. “They were not ordinary. But we just went to sleep.”

The next morning the neighbors learned the tornado had hit, damaging 150 homes. Three people were also killed.

“When you go to bed around here, you expect to wake up in your own bed,” Wald said. “And when we all woke up the next morning and found out three of our residents had died -- we were just in awe.”

More so than that night, though, both Wald and Weinhold say the thing that sticks out to them the most was the way the community came together in the aftermath.

“You had ladies throwing trees over their shoulders. I mean I’ve never seen anything like it,” Wald said. “That whole experience showed the resolve of our community and the hopefulness, the optimism.”

“It just reinforced to all of us how important community is,” Weinhold added.

At the time of the tornado, Wald was the chairperson of the social activities committee. Three months after the tornado the committee held a candlelight vigil, and then they commemorated the victims on the first anniversary by installing two stone benches in the areas of the neighborhood hit the hardest.

At this point, everything in the neighborhood has been repaired or rebuilt, except for two homes. One of those homes was picked up by the tornado and tossed onto the other home. Today, there are two empty lots where those homes stood with just one mailbox left behind.

“Over the course of three years, a lot has changed. The rebuilding has taken place,” Weinhold said. “It’ll probably never be what it was, but what it is now is fine.”

Weinhold is also a therapist. She says it’s important that people address the trauma these natural disasters can cause.

“I think the first thing is knowing how trauma impacts you and knowing what some of the symptoms are, so you don’t think you’re going crazy,” Weinhold said. “A lot of these times, these symptoms will resolve on their own, but if they don’t then it’s important to know what kind of help is out there.”

This year, Weinhold is also the chairperson of the social activities committee. The committee didn’t plan anything to commemorate the third anniversary. Weinhold says the community is ready to move on and look towards the future, focusing on the camaraderie they’ve built since that Valentine’s Day three years ago.

Wald thinks it’s a great idea.

“There’s a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, but I’ll tell you on February 15th three years ago we saw the best of humanity,” Wald said. “After going through that, there’s no one in our community who’s a stranger.”