It’s been a year since a derecho, a powerful wind storm, tore through Allen County and hit Fox Island Park directly. The storm knocked down 3,000 trees at the nature preserve and created a situation so dangerous the park’s been closed to the public ever since.
Staff and volunteers have been working to restore the park to a safe enough environment to reopen, but with only eight people on staff and many near retirement age, Natalie Haley, Fox Island Park’s education and park manager, said the overall volume of the work has been difficult.
She said there’s more that needs to be done than clearing debris. Closing the park has canceled almost all of the volunteer events in the last year. That has prevented volunteers from helping get invasive species under control at the park. Haley said that’s been a priority since the closure along with debris removal, tree planting and trail restoration.
Judd Edwards is the supervisor of the fertilization department at Lawnganics and Vision Scapes. He said he’s an outdoors enthusiast who is very familiar with Fox Island Park.
“I grew up in those woods,” Edwards said. “(My) teenage (years) and 20’s, I was out in those woods a ton. The first day that Natalie took me on a tour, words are hard to come by of what it looked like out there. It was shocking.”
Edwards wound up sending some of his staff to help remove invasive species at the park. He said he sent those who volunteered to go, still paid them like a normal day and charged nothing to the park. He said he had no hesitation to help out.
“Oh, not at all,” Edwards said. “I think it was really fitting for what we’re trying to do with our community outreach and different programs we have here and the willingness of our guys to pretty much tackle any kind of project.”
Haley said that help has gone a long way.
“While we’re waiting on loggers, we’re doing a lot of that invasive plant removal,” Haley said. “That’s one great thing for this park. I never thought we would get a handle on the invasive plants here, and it will have to continue.”
Clearing the debris has created other challenges as well. Workers have had to use skidders to remove the large pieces of debris. Haley said that has damaged the trails.
“They’re often pitted by the skidders when they’re skidding out logs,” Haley said. “So, you really have to build up the trail system again to where people can actually walk on it.”
In the year since the storm hit, the park has been made safe enough for some volunteers to help plant new trees to replace the ones that fell. Those volunteers along with park staff have planted 7,100 trees more than twice what fell. Volunteer Sarah Maloy said that is an encouraging sign.
“I believe these efforts have given the community hope that the park will reopen,” Maloy said.
Haley said timing was everything with why so many trees fell. She said the derecho created more than one downdraft, a downward current of air.
Those downdrafts along with the straight line winds hit Fox Island Park directly right when the trees had their leaves for the warm season. Those leaves acted as sails, catching the wind and making the trees so top heavy that they fell. Some older dead trees are still standing at the park because they don’t have leaves that caught the wind. Mike Durbin is a photographer who routinely takes pictures of wildlife at Fox Island Park and said he couldn’t believe what he saw when he came to document the recovery efforts.
“(It was) a reaction of shock,” Durbin said. “A bit of a gut-punch and heartbreaking. It’s a place that has meant so much to me over the years and to so many people in the community as well.”
Many of the trees that fell were more than 100 years old. Haley said because of that, the trees volunteers and staff are planting now are for future generations to enjoy.
She said the park may never look like it did before the derecho hit in our lifetimes. Haley, her staff and volunteers are working to get the park back to a safe enough environment to open back up. They all said the community is missing something with the park being closed. Durbin said it’s a bonding opportunity.
“I think of it as a community gathering place, a place where people can get together with friends and family and explore the natural resources that we have here in Fort Wayne and Allen County,” he said.
Maloy said it’s an escape.
“To have that outlet to retreat to, whether you want to take your kids for a picnic or you want to go on a hike or you are living in the middle of a city and need a place like Fox Island County Park to decompress,” she said.
Haley said the park is part of the community’s identity.
“I really feel for people,” she said. “I want them back in the park because that was my job literally for 16 years. It was to get people to come out here and relax in nature and value it and really enjoy it. So, to now tell people they can’t come to the park, I feel like just the worst type of person.”
Haley said she is recommending the Allen County Park Board keep Fox Island Park closed until April of next year, to reopen in conjunction with Earth Day.