If you're like me you've never invested a lot of mental energy learning about Missouri. It's not a huge state like Texas or California, it's not a basket case like Mississippi or West Virginia. St Louis probably isn't the first city you mention when talking about major American cities. Kansas City borrows another state's name for God's sake. It's a bit southern or maybe western. It doesn't cause much trouble and gave us the amiable Dick Gephardt and the much less amiable John Ashcroft (who had the unique distinction of losing an election to somebody who was dead before becoming George W Bush's Attorney General). So Missouri just tends to languish in the category of pleasantly-average-but-not-very-interesting" states in the public consciousness. I'm not out to change any of that. I bring it up only to say that I had no impression of what Joplin Missouri would or should be like. I just knew there had been a horrible tornado last May and that this was an opportunity to help.
The first surprise was the size, Joplin boasts a population of 50,000 in the city itself and 176,000 counting the surrounding communities as of the 2010 census. It's closer to Tulsa and Fayetteville than it is to Kansas City and is very much a regional hub serving the area where Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma all meet. So it was never just a dot on the map, it was and is the cultural and retail center for a significant area complete with its own branch of the State University.
The second surprise was when I first drove into town from the northeast, I saw no damage at all. The houses, downtown and malls all looked pretty much like any other American town. But after I found where I was staying I saw the tornado zone and it was staggering. An area of roughly 4 square miles virtually empty. Houses, trees vehicles all wiped off with only the streets marking what were once tightly packed residential neighborhoods. Here and there a few houses were going up on the foundations of the old and here and there a few houses waiting to be demolished stood in tatters. Other than that just street after street of empty lots and miscellaneous pieces of concrete. I tried to imagine what it would be like to lose everything. Sure, we all have too much stuff but some of it means a lot and just knowing it's there can mean a lot. What would it be like to have most or all of it destroyed and not have time to grieve in the chaos of trying to survive or locate friends and family.
The town has come a long way. The High School is up and running. News stories help keep the volunteers coming. Extreme Home Makeover is building seven homes in seven days. But for the other seven hundred homes destroyed by the tornado there's still a long way to go. As a volunteer you sometimes feel like your contribution is kind of small. On this trip I found myself wanting to make more of an emotional connection and at least try to imagine what it was like. It was after all the worst tornado in the US since 1947, seventh worst ever in the US overall measuring a mile wide at its peak and its peak strength was in a densely populated area. The few trees left standing in the tornado zone are stripped of their bark and the upper limbs are snapped off. The cost will run somewhere around 2 billion, the human toll incalculable. One can't help but pause and reflect at the enormity of the destruction and hope that America will show the same kind of compassion and support that it did showed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Each volunteer's contribution may only be a drop in the bucket but enough drops and we've really made a difference.