As many of you may have heard there was a devastating tornado about an hour north of us in Joplin, MO. Our Stake (church) organization organized a Momon Helping Hands crew of 330 (men & young men) this past weekend to help with disaster relief. Upon arrival at the scene I was taken back by how much more devastating the reality was when compared to what was shown on TV. I've never seen anything like it and am amazed that the death count isn't estimated more that it is. How people survived baffles me. I saw and heard a few stories of survival that boggle the mind. How anyone can be sucked out of their home into a shrapnel throwing twister and then be spit back to solid ground and live simply amazes me.
The silver lining in tragedy was evident as I walked through neighborhoods and talked to the few remaining tenants of half-eaten homes. The town was literally overwhelmed with volunteers and visitors. So many churches, so many volunteers... all from different backgrounds, all coming together to help complete strangers. Survivors couldn't help but feel loved by crews of random people offering help, food, clothes, etc.
Here are a few pictures:
Shrapnel like this was everywhere.
This was the scene for miles with the only exception being that some homes just had concrete slabs with home material embedded somewhere in another part of town.
Many of the trees were stripped of bark like this one shown in the middle below. We often found documents with addresses that when typed into a GPS showed as belonging to individuals living 4-5 miles away. We could only imagine what their house looked like.
Here is the team I worked with.
Tim is a friend from work who wanted to help serve for day and I invited him to be "mormon for a day". He's a hard working guy and is always up for putting a unique experience on his resume.
This is a YouTube video that best films the development of this massive and humbling twister:
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