February 20th, 2008
This day is pretty fuzzy in my mind because of how long ago it was since it is now the 23rd.
We went from Nashville TN to Little Rock today. We passed some knocked down trees outside of Memphis, on the Arkansas side. There were down trees in a forest off the road. At first, it looked like a truck had wrecked alongside the road, but there were things in the tree branches. We concluded it was one of the tornados we had heard about going through the south.
Drove about 6-7 hours today, trying not to fill up Kevin's log with 10 hour days this week.
February 21st, 2008
Began the day in Little Rock Arkansas. Took some pictures of thte city as we went pass. Ended in Bentonville AR, home of Walmart. That is where were we going afterall.
The size of the DC in the southwest part of the city rivaled the ones in Texas. It was HUGE. It had it's own cafeteria. And it had a fee-less ATM inside. Neat. We had lasagna and left for Mountain Home, AR. We were delivering to a walmart store.
There was a storm above and behind us on the way there. It was slow driving the whole way, but it was still safe. Kevin was creeped out a bunch going through some woody areas. I saw a comepletely abandoned 1900's house in what looked like the woods. I was creeped out by that, but otherwise, the road really reminded me of OH state RTE 13 between Zanesville and Athens Ohio, so I was mostly reminiscent the whole time. In fact, I asked Kevin if ha had actually drove us to Ohio when we passed a town with a train track on it and an intersection that was SO very much like the Perryville Ohio town along RTE. 13.
We arrived in Mtn Home and settled down for the night in the parking lot, after Kevin backed the trailer up to a GM side dock.
February 22nd, 2008 (written on February 23rd)
We woke up this morning at a walmart in Mountain Home, the same walmart Kevin delivered to last night. The carts and trash can were still coated with ice, but were starting to melt. I wanted to visit the pet store across the parking lot so we could get some carefresh or litter for Puffkin's place since it had the leak. The store had two kitties and no carefresh. Made the best of it and played with some sweet kitties, Ginger (theand the girl) and the male's name was Red, we think. They were vet clinic kitties and Red had used Ginger as a chew toy :p When I first saw ginger on the dog food in the back, she came up to me and I tried to fix her ear. Obviously, it is permanent. She put her paw on my shoulder, cute. Later she put both her paws on each of Kevin's shoulders like she was going to hug him. Super Cute. Red was very playful and the cashier called him a Pistol. He really liked to bite a pen Kevin had.
We get on our way. And then we pass a building that looks like someone is demolishing it, just a brick frame. It was strange and wew both commented on it.
Then we crested the hill and rounded a corner. And there was the most devastated place I had ever seen. To say we were surprised is and an understatement. I almost cursed (the "s" word :p ) for the first time in my life. I grabbed the disposable camera because there wasn't enough time to power up the digital one.
When we had passed through the night before, it had been dark and we had NO idea what was around us. Morning light revealed a land of devastation, the likes of which I had never witnessed in person. It was terrible and it was amazing. I have only seen things like this in pictures.
Kevin says: "It didn't seem real. That the building we saw was just being torn down, but the damage as we drove got worse and worse. I've never seen anything in my life before. It made me really appreciate the things we have because these people had lost everything."
It didn't have the exact same effect on me. I felt really moved to do something. I wanted to go back and volunteer to help cleanup or assist in something. We don't have much money to donate, but we have time. If the walmart people would send us back there, we will. They said they will try, but nothing is guranteed. I am going to have to develop the roll of film today when we deliver to the walmart store.
http://flickr.com/photos/23744441@N04/sets/72157604021491607/
The pictures will tell you what we saw better than I can. The tornado was a F4 and traveled 123 miles. One person in the town of Mountain Home (but I think by this location the actual name is Gassville, not sure on that) died. A 77 year old woman died in her trailer. The trailer park is not in the photos. There are some people still missing as of the dates in the stories I found on the internet. The tornado was Feb 5th, so anything has probably been confirmed by now as deceased or found. 13 people in Arkansas died. 57 across the nation. I think this may have been the same storm that swept through Roanoke, producing hurricane strength winds. Up until Mountain Home, that was the scariest thing I had experienced. I was home and the house was shaking like there was an earthquake. There was also a lot of problems, including 70,000 people in our area without power for 3 days. We lost it for half a day on Wednesday. We were VERY lucky; a billboard near the house crashed, there were fires on the mountains surrounding us and the neighbor's huge tree fell. Luckily, it only whacked their porch and didn't really damage their house.
I pulled up 20 stories from the region before we ended up in between civilization again and lost the connection. I read them to Kevin as he drove. I would like to come back and take hometime there. I really want to do something to help. It's been 2 and a half weeks since the tornados, but I can see that so many of those people are still homeless. Hopefully, most of the houses in the pictures are simply waiting for insurance. The presence of FEMA and the shelters still in town would perhaps suggest otherwise.
We also passed some dead chickens on the side of the road, about 8 miles apart. Kevin thought it was someone's pets. I thought it must have been a badly driven chicken hauler. In reality, we learned that the tornado had picked up and killed or maimed cattle and chickens all over the area. In reality, those were probably lifted out of their pens or buildings, and either died and was dropped by the twister or were alive before being hit by cars. Domesticated animals very very rarely are capable of taking care of themselves, so I pity them because they likely were scared or hungry and alone when they died.
The remainder of the day was typical. We ended up back at the DC and picked up something in Springdale. We passed a burned down trailer with a wheelchair ramp and I forgot to look on the internet for info about it. I will do that now.
Nighttime found us in Joplin MS, and in the middle of a crystal world. All the trees are coated with ice. Now, it was like this a little bit in AR, but not like this. We got pictures of the trees next to Pilot, where we stayed. I got a nice shower from a showerhead that could have been the star of the elephant showerhead in that Seinfeld episode. It was very nice though and I took an extra long time :)
http://flickr.com/photos/23744441@N04/sets/72157604013712489/ Ice Storm from Joplin
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