Mayor's Community Update Regarding Our Tornado Disaster Recovery

Mayor Gina Cunningham provided the following Community Update:

Dear Woodridge Neighbors,

I would like to provide you with a community update regarding our tornado disaster recovery.
It was Father’s Day evening on June 20, 2021, when an EF-3 tornado hit Woodridge hard and caused disastrous impacts across our community. To this day, 35 months later, we still have neighbors out of their Woodridge County Club #5 condos. Our neighbors have endured much. Some neighbors had nowhere to live and still needed to pay their mortgage and assessments for a home they could not live in. They also have to pay rent for their temporary housing and are also responsible for paying an almost $1MM Insurance Coverage Gap as part of their homeowner’s association future assessments. It has been a long, exhausting, and stress-filled road. So, with much neighborly care at heart, I am asking every helping hand to please help us bring our neighbors home! We are grateful for our neighbors’ resilience, kindness, and perseverance in staying strong for almost 3 years. Their unwavering strength and perseverance have been a beacon of hope for all of us. In these challenging times, their acts of great compassion have touched many hearts. Today, I find myself ever-inspired by our community spirit and I am reaching out to ask you for your help in bringing our neighbors home. As a community, we stand together through thick and thin. Now, more than ever, is the time to be united, extend our helping hands, and show our neighbors that we are a community bound by kindness, empathy, and great care.

Woodridge Neighbors Helping Neighbors Disaster Recovery is a registered 501© (3) organization that was created in August 2021 in direct response to the June 20th tornado. For the past three years, WNHNDR and its Board, volunteers, partners, and friends have been dedicated to serving our Woodridge community and neighbors with great compassion and service through the long-term disaster recovery process.

Mayors Helping Mayors (MHM) was started to help make a difference to our Woodridge community and neighbors! MHM is helping WNHNDR to bring our neighbors home. Mayors Frank Trilla (Willowbrook) and Joseph Marchese (Darien) reached out to help us make a difference to our neighbors in need. Together with other neighboring Mayors, we have created a tornado disaster Friendraiser to be held on June 26, 2024, to benefit our neighbors at WCC5. I have included the Friendraiser invitation for your consideration and ask that you please join us in “Doin’ Good!”

With a grateful heart and much gratitude,

Mayor Gina Cunningham