VIDEO: Louisville Still Rebuilding Two Years After Deadly Tornado

LOUISVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)- It’s been almost two years since Louisville was hit by an E-F-4 tornado that completely obliterated parts of town. It left the hospital unusable and killed ten people.

Slowly but surely it is rebuilding brick by brick. Mayor Will Hill sees the growth every day.

“There’s still so many signs of what did happen and we’re still working on a lot of infrastructure needs. But to continue to have positive things to come along our way with you know, industry expansion and there’s hope in retail and service, so it’s very encouraging and we wanna take every step seriously and build on this momentum,” says Hill.

One of the buildings the mayor is referring to is the rebuilding of Winston Medical Center.

“It’s created so much energy within the community, it will be a beautiful campus. One things for sure we want to make sure folks realize it’s not just a hospital, it’s an entire medical community and it will be a beautiful finished product and hopefully from there we’ll have more services and I think there’s a lot of excitement on all levels in the community and hopefully the region,” says Hill.

It’s currently about about 50% complete.

“That means that we should be through within the next 6-9 months which puts us about spring of next year,” says Hospital Chief of Operations Paul Black.

Black says the hospital’s senior living facility had an institutional look and an institutional feel. The hospital is looking forward to a new look and improving the quality of life for senior residents.

“We’ve come up with a community home concept. You’ll see out on the site we have three new buildings that are on the far east side of the property and those are what we refer to as community homes. And on each end of that community home is what we refer to as a cottage. Each cottage will have it’s own front entrance. The idea we’re trying to put forth is like coming to someone’s home,” says Black.

Black believes the hospital rebuild is another part of the community healing process.

“The rebuilding of the hospital is just another healing of a wound that happened from the tornado. And we feel like once we’re able to open up the hospital, that’s just another like I said, wound that’s gotten healed and that’s kind of what we mean by right now in this process, we’re getting better everyday. Not only are we getting better everyday but so is Winston County and Louisville getting better everyday,” says Black.