Scars from the Tornado (8 page)

Earlier that
day, everything was bright and sunny, and no one could have ever guessed what
was about to happen. Now, there were green and black clouds covering the sky
and the wind was blowing furiously. Hail the size of golf balls was raining
from the sky.

We saw a
horrific sight on the TV right before the electricity flashed off. A tornado
the size of Mt. Everest was on the ground and coming. It was 5:41 p.m. and
Joplin was never going to be the same. We watched out my front door with
horror. We did not know where the powerful tornado was. We went down to my
basement to ride out what was left of the storm.

When we came
out, all we heard were sirens from emergency vehicles flying down 7th Street.
We did not know where the storm hit so we went to check on my grandma and
grandpa.

As we drove,
we listened to the radio coverage of the storm. We heard Range Line was hit
badly and so was Duquesne. We arrived at my grandma’s house and their car was
gone. Where were they? Did they go to the store before the tornado or to get
something to eat? We had no clue, but we were determined to find them.

We drove down
Range Line. It looked as if an atomic bomb had hit Joplin. Normally, you could
not see very far from Range Line because of trees and houses, but now if you
looked out over the horizon everything was flat and you could see for miles. We
were on the
Walmart
parking lot and cards were
stacked on top of each other like building blocks. People were bustling about
trying to recover and pull others out of the wreckage. That image will stay in
my mind forever.

We drove back
home and found an old wedding photo that had been blown into our yard. We
searched the yard and found more photos, baseball/basketball cards, insulation,
and splintered pieces of wood. The tornado had just barely missed our house.

We waited in
anticipation to hear from my grandparents. Then at last, my aunt called and
said that my grandparents were worried sick because they drove to our house
after the tornado and we weren’t home. We were looking for them while they were
looking for us. Soon we had confirmation that no one in our family had been
injured in the tornado, which was a major relief.

The rest of
the night it was impossible to sleep. Emergency sirens kept coming and coming.
A little radio, which ran on AAA batteries, was the only thing we had to keep
us updated.

Keisha
Gruden
was an eighth grader during the 2011-2012 school
year.

THE WORST
DAY OF MY LIFE

BY
C
OURTNEY
H
UNT

May 22 was the
worst day of my life.

I was in the
tornado and I felt the house shaking, windows breaking, people screaming and
crying. We were in a small closet and there were a lot of people who were in
there
, my aunts, uncle, two cousins, four dogs, and me.
After it was done, the house started to cave in.

After we got
out, there was only one car that would work. We had to clean it out,
then
we all fit in. While we were trying to get to the
church, my uncle and cousin took off walking. We had to go through yards, over
power lines, over trees. We almost flipped the car twice.

It took us
about three or four hours to get from the house to my grandma’s. When we were
on our way there, we saw dead people along the road in cars. We also saw people
with blood all over them.

My two little
cousins died, one died during the tornado, while the other died at the
hospital.

The Extreme
Makeover people built their mom, dad, and sister a new house. They were one of
the five families who got picked.

Their mom said
she wished she
would have
died instead of her kids.

Courtney
Hunt was an eighth grader during the 2011-2012 school year.

THE
SCARIEST DAY OF MY LIFE

BY
V
ICTORIA
S
TEHM

May 22, 2011,
was the scariest day of my life.

I remember
running to my grandma’s basement. I was terrified and nervous. I am usually
never scared of tornado warnings, but this time I was. I felt that something
bad was bound to happen.

I instantly
started crying when the electricity went off. I knew something terrible had
happened. After that, I remember making my way outside. My grandma’s house was
fine, so I wasn’t nervous. I thought everything was okay after that, until
people came running, saying Dillon’s was destroyed and neighborhoods were gone.

I did not know
what to think. I thought my friends were dead. I couldn’t stop crying that
night. I was depressed; our town was depressed. I thought the world was falling
apart.

Victoria
Stehm
was a seventh grader during the 2011-2012 school
year.

A BIG THANK
YOU TO THE VOLUNTEERS

BY
G
ARRETT
S
EVERS

I am a
survivor of the May 22 Joplin Tornado. It was a scary night, a Sunday. School
was out and it was a beautiful day and it was high school graduation day.

My aunt,
uncle, cousin who graduated and a cousin who goes to East Middle School all
asked my parents and me to go to Golden Corral for a celebration. We had just
returned from my travel tournament in Nevada about an hour earlier, but we told
them we wanted to wait for the weather to clear out before we went anywhere.

My sisters,
one of
whom
had a baby one week earlier at St. John’s
Hospital, arrived and they were scared.

We started
watching the news on KODE and they said, “It looks like it’s going to be a
rain-wrapped tornado.” They showed a picture and video from the tower of what
it looked like, and then about five minutes later, they said to take cover.

The tornado
hit our house, leaving a couple of trees on it. The one that landed on the roof
kept the roof from getting torn off.

After the
tornado, my dad, my sister and I were walking to my best friend’s house.
Luckily, she was at her dad’s in Oklahoma, but we saw a car with all of the
windows busted out, two tires popped and two doors ripped off. Everyone in the
car was crying and one of them said, “It’s all we’ve got.”

After a couple
of days, volunteers started to help with the debris and moved it to try to find
people, then they started tearing houses down and for a long time Joplin was so
bare. You could see the high school football stadium all the way across town.

After about
seven months, some things had been cleaned up and Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition came and built seven houses in seven days. There were so many people
coming to help Joplin. Many of them did not even know anyone from Joplin, but
they came to help us.

We thank all
of the volunteers who came to Joplin.

Garrett
Severs was a sixth grader during the 2011-2012 school year.

STRANDED

BY
R
YAN
B
ALL

On May 22, 2011,
one of the most devastating tornadoes ever recorded hit the city of Joplin,
Missouri. The single tornado took out a quarter of Joplin and the size of the
tornado from side to side was a mile wide. Looking at an aerial view of
Joplin’s EF-5 tornado was astonishing.

That day,
after we got home from church, we could tell that there was going to be a
storm, but we had no idea that it could become as bad as it did. We spent the
whole day inside because it had been a bit stormy all day until about two
o’clock. We spent a few hours watching television, eating sandwiches, and
playing video games.

It was about
five o’clock before we started seeing something happening. As my mom looked
outside the window, her phone rang. It was from my stepdad. He called because
when he was driving to Fredonia, he saw about six storm chaser vehicles
speeding right past him, heading straight the other way to Joplin.

My mom already
knew what to do. She gathered the dogs and the kids in the hallway because
something was going to happen. We all gathered in the hallway, no electricity,
no
light, just us.

We heard the
tornado sirens go off, then stop, then back on. Then, a big flash of lightning
hit Joplin, lighting up the entire sky. We waited in the hallway for about 10
minutes. Then my mom went to the front door to look outside. All she saw was
trees leaning diagonally, fences getting knocked down, and the rain getting
blown in all different directions. After all that happened in that 20 minutes,
we knew that there was going to be a tornado.

We waited in
the hall until the house stopped shaking. Then we all looked outside. Trees
were down, fences scattered, and people were examining the damage. It was hard
to look at. We knew something had to be done.

With no power,
we were stranded in our home.
Only my brothers and sisters
and my mom.
My siblings and I agreed that Mom needed to go to work,
since she is a nurse.

After she
left, we waited for my grandma to pick us up.
 

Ryan Ball
was a seventh grader during the 2011-2012 school year.

THE SCHOOL YEAR

A WONDERFUL
YEAR

BY
S
ARAH
P
ETERSON

Before school
started, in seventh grade, I was terrified. For eight years, I had attended a
small private school, where I knew everyone and had plenty of friends.
Suddenly, I was changing to a new school, where I knew no one at all. To make
matters worse, the real school had been hit by a tornado. The building I was
going to was a warehouse that had been fixed up to function as a temporary
school until the new one could be built. When I thought of my warehouse school,
I imagined a big, empty building with stone floors and a few temporary walls
put up to serve as classrooms. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to
starting the new school year.

On the first
day of school, my mom dropped me off early in the morning. The school was a big
white building with the words “East Middle School” painted on the side with
wobbly letters. There were a lot of students already there, so I followed the
crowds of people in to the building, anxious to see what the inside was like.
When I passed through the doors for the first time, I nearly gasped in
amazement. The floor was carpeted, and the temporary walls were
indistinguishable from normal ones. Everything was perfect, showing no evidence
that the building had ever been anything but a school. Eventually, I tore my
attention away from the walls, and looked down at my schedule. It read, “First
Hour: Mrs. Hale, Science, Room 702.” With some difficulty, and a lot of help
from the maps posted on the walls, I located my first class. I found a desk
near the back of the room, and sat down. Soon, class began. Mrs. Hale turned
out to be a funny, joyful teacher who loved doing activities with her students.
She announced that for the first few days, we would be working on projects in
pairs, and that we could choose our own partners. Most people immediately
rushed to pair up with one of their friends. I looked around nervously. I hoped
that someone would ask me work with them, but was too shy to ask anyone myself.
Thankfully, the girl sitting behind me asked if I would like to be her partner.
I agreed gratefully. We had a fun time working together for the rest of the
hour. She was really nice, and she was new to East, just like me. At the end of
the hour, the bell rang, and I let out a sigh of relief. I had survived my
first class at a new school. Actually, it had been kind of fun. Throughout the
rest of the morning, I attended FACS, advanced math, and social studies. They
all seemed like neat classes. The social studies class was especially fun,
because there were only six students, and the teacher, Ms. Stamper, was very
enthusiastic and funny. I was starting to think that this new school might not
be so bad after all, when the bell rang for lunch.

When I entered
the lunchroom, it was already crowded. Tons of kids were waiting in line for
their lunches, or sitting down at the tables with their friends. I was
overwhelmed, not knowing anyone who I could sit with, and not willing to sit
down by someone I didn’t know. For a while, I walked around the tables,
pretending to be looking for my friends, but really just trying to find a table
with no one sitting at it. I looked everywhere, but all of the tables were
full. I was honestly starting to wonder if I could eat my lunch on the floor,
when Ms. Stamper saw me and gestured for me to come and sit by her and a few
other kids from my social studies class. I sat by them, and, thanks to Ms.
Stamper, lunch turned out okay.