The Joplin Tornado Tragedy: a continued firsthand account from Access Family Care
Posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 4:34 pm
The below is a continued firsthand account(see our May updates here) from Access Family Care Executive Director, Don McBride, who is communicating with us from the heart of the Joplin, MO, tornado relief efforts. We wanted to share these accounts and will be bringing them to you daily, here on the MPCA website.
****June 1*****
They found him in a dumpster. It was at a church near 7th and Maiden Lane, just blocks up from the EF5 tornado devastation that hit Joplin May 22. The morning after the tornado, a couple of church members were dumping stuff and found him there. He was a young man in his 20’s. He lost his wife and baby in the tornado. He wandered dazed and just crawled into the dumpster to cry and hide. The church took care of him.
The heart-rending stories are coming in; stories of survival, spared lives, and heroes. Along with those stories a website honoring the lives that were taken by the tornado is called In Memoriam.
ACCESS Family Care’s Joplin clinic supervisor Darlene Sarley, hit the road again with her team bringing relief to tornado survivors and the army of volunteers combing through debris helping owners find salvageable items. She said it was the toughest day yet, “I was removing stitches from a young man today and he told me and María that his 16-month old baby had died.” He lived behind Pronto Pharmacy. He had several stitches, staples, cuts, bruises and a blown pupil. His mom is still in the hospital along with a friend who might not make it.
Darlene ended her text to me about the young man with the words, “So sad.”
“There are no words for the devastation,” adds Darlene. “I am so glad we are able to be out there helping them.”
“I have seen houses with the words ‘John 3:16,’ ‘God is alive and so are we,’ ‘Jesus saves’ spray-painted on what is left of their homes,” texted Darlene to me.
I just saw on one of the Joplin Relief Facebook pages that Governor Nixon announced that the unaccounted-for number is officially at zero. Each day Joplin takes baby steps toward recovery. The water boil order is over, and construction is already taking place.
ACCESS Family Care has an account set up for tax-deductible donations for patients and staff who lost their homes. It can be found on the ACCESS home page.
I’ve asked staff to report tetanus vaccination totals to me. Unofficially, thousands of vaccinations have taken place through several agencies including ACCESS, and a good guess for just this last Saturday had a number past 200.
Our triage area is still set up in the waiting room. We are now seeing wounds related to debris removal. Tim Mitchell of Neosho’s Family Pharmacy has a volunteer staff supporting a temporary pharmacy of donated items designated for tornado survivors who lost their medications. Word is getting out and there are a lot of people coming for this service.
Pat Stoner, our Billing Manager, related to me that her daughter and son-in-law, Dennis, were volunteering helping with debris removal. The owner of the home where they were helping was obviously overwhelmed and said he didn’t know where to start. Dennis said, “We’re standing here, let’s start here.” And they did, and were able to spread out and get a lot done. That was perfect advice. The whole picture is overwhelming, but if each person just does what they know to do right where they are, those baby steps will become strides towards Joplin’s restoration.
