Joplin, Missouri.....

If I think about Joplin too much Ill over think, and that’s not good. So Ill just spew,
Imagine what Hiroshima must have looked like after the dust had settled and the first living humans ventured into the area. I cant imagine that their reactions would have been any different than my reaction to what I saw when the reality of Joplin, Missouri, post tornado, hit me.
It looked like a bomb, literally, had hit the place. The news stories from area TV described a scene so horrific and so full of devastation that I figured that they were being overly dramatic. They weren’t.
Ive always been impressed with the power of nature, but this was something to behold. Imagine steel beams twisted like licorice. Whole box stores, like WalMart and the Home Depot, reduced completely to a pile of rubble and debris. Other businesses, smaller in scale, reaching a dubious equality with their bigger brethren by virtue of having not a single brick left standing.
Regular people had it worse. WalMart’s losses were products, merchandise and a building. Entire neighborhoods leveled, people’s lives and homes, gone in an instant.
A couple named Pat and Tony rummaged through the rubble of their home, looking for photos and keepsakes. A cheap guitar lay on the ground. I took a photo of it. Pat noticed me and told me, “Oh, you can have that guitar if you want it.” I briefly contemplated her offer but a worker nearby told me it night get me in trouble if someone questioned me about it, and I decided to leave it behind.
Walking into Joplin early this morning, I noticed a lot of lightweight objects strewn about along the road and in the fields---plastic bags, papers, photos, and a plethora of plastic lids to various Tupperware type containers, large and small. It occurred to me that the wind from the tornado acted as a natural sifter, carrying the smaller and lighter objects along in the wind for miles but depositing heavier materials closer to the center of the storm. As I walked I began to notice piles of heavier material, like aluminum siding, shingles, and building debris, and by the time I got almost all the way into the city there were huge pieces of flat metal and wood strewn across the landscape. Then I noticed the trees. Metal twisted and bent by high winds is impressive, but if a sign or flat surface is involved it makes sense, in a physics sort of way. Bark, completely stripped off the surface of healthy trees, by winds, no less, makes no sense to me at all, and boggles my mind.
I encountered a man named Jim. He asked me if I needed water. I thanked him, but told him that it was I who should be offering him some help. Jim was removing tree limbs and debris from his property. It was a rental, but still his home. Located at the outer edge of a section of Joplin called Dufresne, the house had been surrounded by tall and thick trees. No trees stood intact, and by some sheer stroke of luck, none had hit Jim’s house, which sustained wind damage that took off a small section of shingles and roofing. He had already covered that area with a blue tarp and was now busy cutting tree limbs and stacking the wood. Free firewood for someone.
He told me that he was leaving Missouri soon. Several years ago he lived in Pierce City, where I was pasing through just yesterday, and a tornado had trashed the town and his home there. Now he had lived through his second one. “Im moving to Alaska, “ he said, half joking, and wishing me well as I departed.
Following advice from Jim, with an eye on getting as many pictures of the destruction as I could, I made a right turn north on a street called Range Line Road. It was only after a few tenths of a mile that I noticed a the beginnings of the destruction.
And then, it was everywhere. Huge piles of rubble, as far as the eye could see. I had seen the news and knew that a Home Depot and a WalMart had been destroyed. I was standing in front of a pile of rubble, not realizing that it was indeed the Home Depot. Telltale traces of orange signs were all that remained to identify the place from the front. The same held for many other businesses familiar and unfamiliar. Nothing remains but the memories.
Leaving the commercial area, such as it was, I found myself looking at long rows of piles of wood and bricks and cars, bent into weird and ugly hunks of metal. At the beginning of each row was a small plastic sign, with a state’s name on it. It took me a moment to realize that I was in a neighborhood. The regular street signs were gone, and these had been put there to help peope identify what was left of their homes, which, in most cases, was nothing but rubble. A few homes still half stood, often revealing intact rooms, closets open and clothing still hanging neatly inside. It’s not a stretch to think that in some cases their owners would never wear them again.
Someone, I assume the police, had devised a system for search and rescue. Any car, building, anything that might hold a person was searched and once declared empty, was painted with a red X. I saw many many of these X’s on cars and houses. In some cases the owners of the houses themselves had left painted messages on doors or walls that remained, telling people where they were relocated to. Others had made notations that their pets were missing, or more happily, were okay, safe and sound.
They say that it takes a really bad thing to bring out the good in some people. I don’t know if that is why there were so many people out helping, digging, rummaging, feeding, driving others around, giving advoce to strangers on how to find shelter, etc, but the Good were out in full force. I almost literally had food thrown at me today, and ate enough to last me a few days. I still have some apples that were given to me.
I thought I had seen it all, but remembered the area of the St John’s Hospital, a mile away. I headed there, prepared to get a few shots of a partially destroyed building, and was amazed and dismayed to discover that it was almost as bad as the commercial district, and with yet another neighborhood destroyed as well. The media were all set up, a press conference was going on, the army reserves were all over, police from all over were directing traffic, and irt was a very somber atmosphere, just as it was down the street.
What is amazing to me is this: Just 5 days after this massive disaster, life is going on here in Joplin. People are milling about, services are restored by and large. Even the internet is back, and I am only a few blocks from the destruction as I write this. The police hav this place moving along, and not once did I, a stranger pushing a cart through a disaster area, was not asked to leave or move on once, as I walked right up to areas that in another state would have been off limits to civilians. I was told that at forst they did try to keep people out but it was too much to do so they just let the curious come in and take their pictures and leave. Which I did.
Words do not do justice to what I saw today. I wanted to get my thoughts down quickly before they leave me, but I somehow doubt I will ever forget what I experienced today. There are still a hundred and fifty or so people missing, and I am sure I passed by a few of them, their bodies buried in rubble, or thrown by ridiculous winds into fields to be discovered later, or not at all.
This is a tragedy of epic proportions. It is also a recovery effort of equal size, and the rebuilding of this city will go on. In fact, it’s already begun.