HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Six months later, the horror of the April 27 tornadoes still resonates.

“I’ve been shot at, been blown up, nothing compared to being in that closet with my girls,’” said Army 1st Sgt. Jake Endres, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. “They said ‘Daddy, I’m scared’. I said ‘Yep, me, too.’

“But I said we’re going to make it through this.”

Their northwest Madison County house was destroyed that day, but the family survived along with their two dogs and two cats.

Six months later, Endres is standing outside their new house at the same spot on Midling Circle in the Carters Gin community. There is sod waiting to be spread on the front yard and a pumpkin on the porch.

In this oasis of perseverance amid a tornado-scarred area where the destruction is still all too evident, the pumpkin is an attempt to tighten a grip on normalcy.

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to do, get back to normal,” said Endres, who is retiring from the Army next week. “We’re back in school again, we’re getting in that routine again. It’s good to see our neighbors moving back in again.

“It’s good to get back to a little bit of normalcy.”

Well, call it another version of the New Normal. As Endres talked, a crew was in the process of installing a steel storm shelter in the family’s garage.

“Coming back here, the storm shelter, obviously, was a must,” he said. “There was no doubt.”

Touring the tornado-damaged area in the Harvest/Toney communities is to see uplifting signs of recovery side-by-side with day-after snapshots.

Endres sees it daily outside his rebuilt home. In a destroyed house across Old Eli Road, the only thing that has changed in six months is the weeds have grown taller.

“My kids walk out to the bus stop each day and that’s what we still see,” Endres said. “What is the process to get rid of that?

“For our neighborhood to get back to normalcy, that’s got to go away.”

It’s not an uncommon scene in the area to see houses untouched since April. But Dale Strong, Madison County District 4 commissioner, said there are no easy solutions. Strong’s district was most affected by the storms and he said there is a “continual assessment” of apparently abandoned homes and property.

Some cleanup, Strong said, is on hold as property owners go through divorces or take insurance companies to court. Some are overseas in the military and haven’t been home since the storms.

New construction is obviously on the increase over the past three months, perhaps best evidenced by eight homes either under construction or lots being prepared for building on tiny Placid Drive in the Fords Chapel community.

Elsewhere, debris piles are still evident throughout the Anderson Hills subdivision. So are untouched damaged homes.

“We’ve still got a couple of dwellings that need to be leveled that have not been leveled,” Strong said. “Overall, where we are at this point is monumental. The people in this area are resilient.”

Beyond Madison County, the recovery is much the same – encouraging, if not yet comprehensive.

Rita White, EMA director in Limestone County, said “recovery has gone fairly well. We’ve gotten the debris cleaned up fairly quickly – as quickly as we possibly could.” She also said the county had received a $27,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security for improved communications equipment in the wake of the storms.

Most of the major debris has been removed in Marshall County, where the National Weather Service confirmed 15 tornadoes touched down on April 27. Helping survivors get back on their financial feet, though, is still an ongoing process, according to Marshall County EMA Director Anita McBurnett.

Because of those 15 tornadoes hitting a largely rural county, “We’ve had a lot of wooded debris – more so probably than any other county,” McBurnett said.

And just as in Marshall County, Jackson County EMA Director Victor Manning said funds are still needed. Manning said faith-based organizations are working with assisting storm victims in a joint effort with neighboring DeKalb County.

“Really, the biggest problem we have is just a lack of funds,” Manning said.

The power of people helping people, however, has been a common thread in the six-month aftermath. The day after the storm, Endres told people he was leaving.

Six months later, he’s one of the first to rebuild.

“The community is what’s brought us back here,” Endres said. “The kids’ teachers stopped by to check on them, their bus driver stopped by to check on them. People we didn’t even know stopping by to help. It was unbelievable.

“I almost felt I owed something to come back here.”

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Email me at paul.gattis@htimes.com