Beaten and Whipped

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Tornados are usually in a hurry. They drop down from the sky, whiz across the land at 50 miles an hour for a minute or so, then dissipate or rise back up into the clouds.

The tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2012, took it’s time. Meteorologists say it moved across the city at five miles an hour. It stayed on the ground for 32 minutes, leaving a path of destruction a mile wide and 22 miles long. Two to four vortices formed and circled each other, churning everything in their path at 225 to 250 miles an hour, like a giant KitchenAid mixer. Houses were lifted off their foundations. Trees were uprooted; those that remained were stripped of their leaves and bark. Cars and trucks were tossed and crushed. Virtually nothing survived intact.

But the tornado did not touch all of Joplin equally. While some houses were destroyed, others were unharmed. In some neighborhoods, the trees are gone; in others, trees are green and leafy. Likewise, the citizens of Joplin weren’t all affected equally. Some families lost loved ones; others lost jobs when the businesses where they worked closed. Everyone has a story about where they were when the tornado struck, or about someone they knew who survived or died.

We heard stories of people who suffered but were ashamed of their own sadness. A woman saw her fatally injured dog put down. She felt guilt in her sadness, knowing that others lost family members. People who lost homes felt guilty for surviving when others lost lives.

Joplin is a city with painful memories. While houses can be rebuilt; businesses reopened, and trees replanted, those memories will last forever.

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Comments

[Gil Young]

oops
Sorry, I meant "The tornado that hit Joplin on May 22, 2011."