KOKOMO, Ind. — Gabriel Naranjo and his son, Nicolai Naranjo, were in Oklahoma City on a business trip the afternoon of Aug. 24 when they started talking to locals about a familiar, yet deadly, occurrence. 

In 2013, a tornado had ripped through Moore, Oklahoma — located roughly 11 miles south of Oklahoma City — leaving 24 people dead and causing an estimated $2 billion in damage.

It was a disaster that Oklahoma City residents were assuring the Naranjos would never happen to their real estate investments 800 miles away in Kokomo, Indiana.

Ironically, later that day Nicolai Naranjo received a text about an evolving situation at one of their properties. That property, Park Place Apartments, would hours later come to exemplify the devastation of neighborhoods across Kokomo, which, for the second time in four years, suffered significant tornado damage.

“(Manager Pam Reed) texted me that, oh, we have tornado warnings,” Nicolai Naranjo told the Kokomo, Indiana Tribune. “There are always tornado warnings in the Midwest. I said, ‘Alright, keep me posted.’

“And then the next text came in saying, ‘We just walked out and all the roofs are gone.’”

After passing the message to his father, Nicolai Naranjo, in a state of disbelief, tried to call Reed, but was unable to get in touch with her due to the widespread damage, which left large swaths of the roof in the Park Place parking lot and debris throughout the complex.

Stuck in Oklahoma with no means of communication, Nicolai Naranjo and his father began to scroll through Twitter feeds and check local news websites, where they saw pictures of Park Place and began to comprehend the severity of the damage.

It was then that the father-son team began to fear the worst.

“I say, this is a war zone. I was so concerned about the people,” said Gabriel Naranjo. “When he started showing me pictures with no roof, with nothing, my first thought was that we are facing a catastrophe in human life.”

Amazingly, though, no significant injuries were reported at Park Place, in part because management quickly herded residents into a basement. 

The Naranjos have dedicated their lives to commercial real estate, an industry that takes them all over the country and in 2005 brought them to Kokomo and Park Place Apartments.

At the time, Park Place Apartments was what Gabriel Naranjo called “drug city” and a “supermarket” for illegal activity. To take control of the complex, the Naranjos evicted residents from 63 apartments in their first three months of ownership and hired a former police officer to manage the property.

Over the next few years, Gabriel Naranjo took steps to make the complex safer and more attractive to potential renters by adding lights along sidewalks and increasing security. By 2013, Park Place was considered a success story.

In November of that year, the apartment complex narrowly escaped damage when two EF2 tornadoes tore through Kokomo, destroying roughly 60 homes and more than 20 businesses. 

In 2016, residents of Park Place weren’t so lucky. A day after the storm, the city condemned the complex after 80 percent of its buildings were damaged or destroyed.

As workers tear out carpet, clean refrigerators and, in some instances, gut portions of the complex to eliminate molding, the Naranjos are developing a plan to restore Park Place to its former condition, which is likely to take nearly a year.

Currently, the Naranjos, who arrived in Kokomo on Sept. 12, said they are dealing with insurance adjusters, and the rebuilding process will take time.

“Obviously, our number one goal, as someone who feels for our residents, our goal is to get people back into homes, and that’s what we want to do,” said Nicolai Naranjo. “Dealing with so much red tape and dealing with all these other things makes it quite difficult to proceed forward as quickly as we would like to.”

Myers writes for the Kokomo, Indiana Tribune.