HARRISBURG, Ill. — Danny Evans gets choked up easily these days, fighting back tears whenever he talks about his farming friends.

“I’ll tell you what, within an hour or so of the tornado hitting, we had people here helping to load stuff up and keep moving forward,” said Evans, manager of the Harrisburg Farmer Supply Co-op (FS). “We moved about half a million dollars’ worth of feed, fuel and other items out of here so it could be saved. There were at least 12 full truckloads.”

He has worked at the co-op since he was 18, so when he arrived at the site in southern Harrisburg on the morning of Feb. 29, he couldn’t believe what he saw.

“I walked down the street, and I couldn’t find the place. I literally walked past it for a half a block before I realized where I was in the street and there was no FS,” Evans said.

A tornado that weather officials said produced 175 mph winds slammed into the south side of Harrisburg and nearby Ridgway at about 5 a.m. Feb. 29. Seven people died and more than 100 were injured. Property losses stretch into the millions, with more than 300 homes and 25 businesses destroyed, including the co-op.

Two days later, storm systems produced tornadoes across southern Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, killing 38 people.

Evans keeps a notepad handy inside a trailer that was rolled in to serve as a temporary office, filled with more than 120 names and phone numbers of people who have helped clean up.

“I just can’t put into words what that kind of help means for everyone,” he said, adding that plans are to rebuild on the same site within the next six months. “That’s what I keep telling everyone, that we’ll be fully operational in six months, but for now, we’ll make do as best as we can. We have some fuel, and with planting season coming up, we got to get ammonia in the ground.”

FS employee Michael Kukla still is shocked when he looks over the site, an overturned semi sitting near the fuel station and debris piles stacked all around.

“Really, when I look around at all this, it kind of hurts. You see it on TV all the time, but you never think it’s going to happen to you; but it does,” he said.

Linda Sasser, the Harrisburg assistant to the mayor, lives a half-block from the FS site. Her home was largely untouched, but the damage nearby left her stunned.

“It hit us on the highest part of town, but I’ll tell you this, not much holds us back here. People were out right away trying to help. Farmers were out there within 15 minutes,” she said.

On Sunday, crews with Wolfe Construction in Marion and Effingham raced to beat the rain, putting on a new, pitched roof for the Saline County Farm Bureau building adjacent to the FS. The bureau’s flat roof was ripped off. Owner Ed Wolfe, who owns about 1,200 acres of farmland in nearby Clay County, said he has seen some of the worst destruction in recent years.

“It never gets any easier when you see things like this,” said Wolfe, pointing toward the co-op site. “I was in Joplin, Missouri, last year after that tornado, and I was down south after (Hurricane) Katrina hit. It is all bad.”