July 2, 2015, Updated July 6, 2015
Coal City family thanks IsraAID for helping to fix their home. (Photo: Saar Blecher/The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid – Facebook)
Coal City family thanks IsraAID for helping to fix their home. (Photo: Saar Blecher/The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid – Facebook)

The Israeli humanitarian aid relief organization IsraAID is sending an eight member team to Coal City, Illinois to help rebuild the community in the wake of an EF3 tornado that ripped through the town on Monday night. Packing winds up to 160 mph, the tornado left utter destruction in its wake including 884 damaged properties.

The Israeli team members are set to join an American army veteran group to help homeowners gut and fix their homes. Local reports cite that  349 damaged properties are still habitable, 375 are habitable with repairs needed, 106 are uninhabitable and 54 were lost completely.

A home damaged in Coal City tornado. (Photo: The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid – Facebook)
A home damaged in Coal City tornado. (Photo: Saar Blecher/The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid – Facebook)

Among the IsraAID volunteers is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. The grandmother, Bracha Heffner, was raised as a Catholic by a foster family in Germany after the Nazis murdered her father and her mother died of an illness. At 59, upon learning she was Jewish, she moved her entire family to Israel.

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