Tornado

On the same day as we were celebrating all the birthdays (earlier post)--we also ended up in my sister's basement because of tornado warnings. Well--we just got golf ball sized hail at my sister's house. But, Joplin MO got an F5 tornado--that devestated a huge part of the city. My sister's family visits this city from time to time--and it is part of their large LDS Stake (the Stake Center was destroyed).

We were not able to visit for quite a while--but my sister had a friend who set up to deliver cold drinks to any victims or volunteers--so for a while my sister would get as many drinks as she could (via couponing and donations), and delivered them to her friend about every 2 weeks. So--during my big "move south"--we parked the truck (have to go through this city to get to my new place)--and drove around. It was quite surreal, and almost too much to take in (and this was a month afterward). My nieces and nephew's pediatric dentist (who is awesome, by the way) had his office there. He's now moved closer to where they live--but his office was by the hospital that was completely destroyed (the concrete and steel girders that held it up were literally twisted feet by the tornado!)--so we stopped there to take some pictures. I also got some pictures of the high school (Joplin High), which was completely destroyed as well (the district lost 4 or 5 schools!). I was not able to get a picture of this--but the high school sign had lost all it's letters except for the o and p--so someone had spray painted "H and E" onto it to spell "HOPE" High School!

The top picture is of the high school, the others in this section are of random houses. This whole area was an "older" area of the city--and was full of older houses and trees--which are all gone.

These pictures include a picture of my nieces and nephew's dentist's office (it was completely destroyed--you could still see the x-ray--and it still smelled like a dentist's office!), another picture of the high school (this is where you can see the whole side wall fell off of the school), someone's house, the hospital, and the bottom picture is of the dumpster that was at the dentist's office. The one in the back was usable--being used to gather destruction--the one in the front shows what happened to a dumpster in the tornado!