PORTAGE, MI - It's been six months to the day since an EF2 tornado blew through Kalamazoo County.
Some areas have been cleaned up. Others look just as they did the night of May 7.
It's not hard to find tornado wreckage around Portage, Texas Township and Pavilion Township. There are tarps on roofs, damaged homes and snapped trees galore.
Impacted residents have been waiting for the federal government to declare a federal disaster, but the initial request from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was denied. An appeal filed Sept. 11 hasn't received a response yet.
MORE: 'Our turn to ask for help': 6 months after tornado, Portage still hopes for FEMA aid
Meanwhile, individuals are struggling to pay for costly repairs, Portage City Manager Pat McGinnis said. There's a noticeable "depression," in the air in the streets of Portage, he said.
"There's clear evidence that people don't have the resources they need to ... get this taken care of," McGinnis said in late September.
Here are four main areas hit hard by the May 7 tornado and how they look today.
Pavilion Estates, a mobile home park on the outskirts of Portage, received a direct hit from the tornado around 6 p.m. that day, toward the end of the tornado's lifespan.
There were 17 mobile homes damaged, 173 homes destroyed and 16 people injured by the tornado in the neighborhood.
Related: Residents share terrifying tales of tornado: 'You can't help their screaming'
Six months later, the debris hasn't been cleared in totality.
Repairs on some homes are being made.
New developments at Pavilion Estates sit on stilts as they await a complete installation.
However, the new homes, with fresh paint, siding, and windows, are still surrounded by an abundance of destroyed homes in the mobile home park.
Some mobile homes still present are collapsing in on themselves, worn down by weather.
One home with shattered windows, a caving roof and tattered siding has a doorway that doesn't have a door. Instead, it's blocked by a for-sale sign.
Vacant lots are filled with either fresh dirt or new concrete. Electrical boxes stick out of the glass- and wood-covered grass like cactuses in the desert.
Colony Woods, a neighborhood in Texas Township, was one of the first areas hit by the tornado.
Colony Woods was known for its heavy tree canopy, as a former tree sanctuary. But that came to the neighborhood's detriment on May 7.
When the tornado roared through, hundreds of the over 100-year-old trees were plucked out of the ground.
Related: Neighborhood was known for its 100-year-old trees. Until a tornado wiped out hundreds.
Some of the trees landed on roofs, others littered residents' front yards. If the trees didn't land on personal property like a house, fence or treehouse, many residents learned insurance would not pay for the removal costs, said Jo'Anne O'Rourke, president of the Colony Woods Neighborhood Association.
Tree removal costs ranged from $10,000 to six figures in some cases, depending on the length of the trees. Another problem was extensive root systems left exposed after trees were removed.
Now, many of the trees have been removed, and some have been replaced with younger trees.
Some impacted homes are still undergoing renovations, as shown below.
Tucked away in a cul-de-sac on Timbercreek Court are the remnants of several apartment buildings. There, the selective impacts of the May 7 tornado are evident.
77000 Timbercreek Court has been abandoned since May 7. Veronica Mounts, who used to live in the apartment's second floor unit, was told the building is no longer inhabitable.
The building's garage doors have been open for months, as have the doors inside the property. When Mounts returned with MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette reporters in July, she contemplated going inside to see what she could salvage. But she decided the structure wasn't safe enough.
In July, Mounts said she could still see a stack of dishes she had bought earlier in the day sitting in the kitchen. Her bed frame, however, was tossed by the tornado onto another building.
The photo, below, shows Mounts' apartment on the top floor. The building next door is being repaired.
One of the most notable buildings impacted by the tornado was the FedEx shipment center at 6701 Portage Road.
A large portion of the building's roof was ripped off by the storm. Initial reports said up to 50 employees may be trapped inside, but those reports circulated by Kalamazoo County officials were later confirmed to not be true.
No FedEx employees were inside at the time of impact or injured.
MORE: False report of 50 trapped at FedEx building after tornado came from officials' error
A new wall has been installed on the building so far. FedEx officials previously told MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette partial operations are expected to return in late fall.
Before the tornado hit the FedEx building, it struck houses along Romence Road and Lovers Lane.
The photo, below, shows an uninhabited home on Romence Road Parkway in May.
The trees covering the roads were removed shortly after the tornado to restore traffic. Many of the fallen trees on properties have also been removed.
But several uninhabited homes nearby still have tree trunks smashed through roofs.
Here's a look at the same intersection, as of late October, and another just up the road.
For more current photos of the remaining damage, check out the gallery at the top of the story and here.