NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Church at Burns Park was in the path of the recent tornado, and when you look across the street from the church you can see the damage that was left behind.
“We were not even able to drive here, we had to kind of work our way to get on the campus,” said Pastor Rick Greer.
The church owns two buildings that are feet away from its main building, and they were completely destroyed during the tornado.
“There were some trees on the house down to my left down here that had come through the kitchen, roof, and wall,” Greer explained. “The other house that we own up above us now had an unbelievably big oak tree fall on it.”
Although those buildings suffered major damage, Greer said that they're glad the main building is still standing.
“We have very few trees left standing, but our buildings withstood everything. We're very grateful,” said Greer.
Though damage was done to the roof, the church acted quickly to prevent it from getting worse.
“Several of our youth actually got up there and, and did that pretty quickly,” Greer described.
The church like many homes and businesses was left without power for days, but on Saturday it came back on which allowed them to have their Easter service inside.
Pastor Greer said that it felt like a slight return to normalcy.
“We just couldn't serve them like we wanted to without electricity. So, then all of a sudden, we could have food and drink and things like that,” said Greer.
The cleanup of debris isn't done yet, but the church plans to continue helping the community rebuild and recover.
“The next few days are more of what we've been doing, which is wearing out chainsaw blades and chainsaws and pushing all this, the smaller stuff to the street to be picked up,” he said.