CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It's been nearly two months since an EF1 tornado touched down in North Carolina. 

The storm destroyed several homes in one Catawba County neighborhood, and authorities confirmed one person died due to the tornado. 

Community members and groups have been working together to help families affected by the storm, including the Catawba County United Way. 

Mark Bumgarner was born and raised in Catawba County.

"I had the opportunity to leave here and didn't want to," Bumgarner said. "I always applaud people that find opportunities and pursue them. I was fortunate my opportunities were here where I wanted to be. These are my people, this is where I want to be." 

Bumgarner is the executive director for Catawba County United Way.

He says the organization has been supporting long-term recovery efforts by connecting people to the resources they need to get back on their feet. 

"At United Way, we convene and we connect," Bumgarner said. "We were the people that really knew the connections and had the connections to multiple agencies and services."

Bumgarner credits local, state and regional partnerships for helping residents deal with the aftermath of the tornado. 

"The SBA and folks with the emergency management team at the state have been incredible," Bumgarner said. "We got a number of charities and local nonprofits stepping up."

"Seeing this devastation is heartbreaking and there is much work to do, but it's heartwarming to see how the nonprofits in this community have stepped up to help," he said.

"Our partnerships with Catawba County Public Health, Western Piedmont Council of Governments, the Department of Social Services, our local humane society, Eastern Catawba Cooperative Christian Ministry Inc., The Salvation Army, Goodwill, the list goes on and on," Bumgarner said. "We've all come together, because we know if we work together the lift is not as heavy, but for these folks, the lift still feels really heavy." 

Bumgarner says there's still lots of work to be done, but he's pleased with how far the cleanup efforts have gone. 

"The difference even now is night and day," Bumgarner said. "It really does take a village and in this case the village was here, it responded."

Although, this has been a tough time for many, Bumgarner says this community is determined to bounce back from adversity. 

"You see them moving to get out of that crisis mode into that longer term rebuild mode, [however] this still feels very heavy," Bumgarner said. "It's a process, but it's a slow process. The reality is there aren't really resources to help them do that."

"Not everyone in this community was living in poverty, but a large number of them were living at or below the poverty level," he said. "You see the vulnerability poverty creates here. Many of these folks didn't have insurance, so trying to help them recover involves not only rebuilding but how to get the things to rebuild with, how they get things in their home replaced after they were destroyed." 

Bumgarner says they want to also support families with more than repairs. 

"Begin to help them create protective social capital that helps with the vulnerability of poverty," Bumgarner said. "So these case management relationships for mental health, economic, housing and health needs goes beyond the storm recovery, but are long-term relationships to help these folks pull themselves out of poverty." 

Despite the challenges, Bumgarner says he's seeing many community members coming together. 

"There are good stories happening out of here," Bumgarner said. "A young woman here who's 16 and attends a local high school, in one of our community meetings, she was insistent to know from me why wasn't there radar data to give them more warning. She was very informed, I thought she was a meteorologist. I was shocked to learn she was only 16."

"There's the possibility this young woman may be able to participate in the Governor's Page Program," he said. "As that advances, we'll help her parents as a community achieve that." 

When it comes to weather preparedness in the future, Bumgarner hopes more leaders can enhance policy to better support communities that are more vulnerable to disasters. 

"When we were looking for that FEMA declaration, what we realized fairly quickly, because these homes were mostly trailer homes, a number of them much older, we weren't going to reach that economic threshold required for FEMA," he said. "There's where you really see how our policy sometimes disenfranchises those living in poverty. Had this been a middle, upper-middle or upper class area, that threshold would have been met and in all likelihood, the FEMA services wouldn't have been needed."

"We hope we're never in this situation again. It's very possible we will be. We're taking the lessons we learned stepping into this to carry forward," Bumgarner said. 

Disaster loans are available for residents and businesses affected by the Jan. 9 storms. 

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, the filing deadline to return physical property damage applications is April 1. The deadline for economic injury applications is Nov. 1.