Gibson, who has three children of his own, said his home was leveled and "everything in that neighborhood is gone. He pointed to a black pickup that had been tossed into the store's ruins and said it belonged to his roommate's brother, who was last seen in the store with his two young daughters. Justin Gibson huddled with three relatives outside the tangled debris of a Home Depot. 'Everything in that neighborhood is gone' But they quickly realized they'd never find the things they had stored there. Kelley Fritz rummaged through the remains of a storage building on Monday with her husband, Jimmy. Rockwell is sure the couple would have died had they been there instead of at church. When the shaken couple tried to return to their home, they found it had also been lost to the storm. Rockwell saw at least one body pulled from the rubble but was told six more people didn't survive. Rockwell, 74, lay across his 71-year-old wife to try to protect her as the funnel cloud took off the church roof and sent cinder block walls tumbling down. "I'll be scared that every storm will be a tornado," she said.įloyd and Donna Rockwell joined some 100 fellow worshipers at a Baptist church in running for shelter in a children's Sunday school room. We were sure we were going to die."īurzinski said she later saw bodies being pulled from her apartment building. "Everything was being torn apart around us," Burzinski said. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) Mark Schiefelbein / FR80540 APīrenna Burzinski took cover from the tornado in the laundry room of her second floor apartment with a boyfriend. The Capps lost their home after a destructive tornado moved through Joplin on Sunday evening, killing at least 89 people and injuring hundreds more. Donald and Helen Capps of Joplin, Mo., sit in a temporary Red Cross shelter at the Robert Ellis Young Gymnasium at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Mo., Monday, May 23, 2011. "Joplin looked like some of the battles I saw in Korea," he said. "We covered our heads with a couple of pillows and the house collapsed around us," Capps, 79, said.Ĭapps is a Korean War veteran and said the devastation reminded him of a war zone. There was nothing of that store left," said Swatosh.ĭonald and Helen Capps barely survived the destruction of their home, where they cowered in the first floor hallway. When the tornado passed, the store was destroyed but those inside were all alive, she said. "We were getting hit by rocks and I don't even know what hit me," said Swatosh. The group huddled on the floor holding onto each other, and prayed. Leslie Swatosh ducked into a liquor store with several others as the tornado descended on them. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) Charlie Riedel / AP A large tornado moved through much of the city Sunday, damaging a hospital and hundreds of homes and businesses. An emergency worker searches a Walmart store that was severely damaged by a tornado in Joplin, Mo., Monday, May 22, 2011. Their car totaled in the Walmart parking lot, they weren't sure how they would get home - or what would await them there. Monday morning, one of those buses took his family to a shelter downtown. Wohlford, 27, volunteered, helping the passengers unload. The family was taken to a hospital, where a fleet of yellow school buses brought in people with minor injuries. "It was 15 minutes of hell," Wohlford said. They escaped serious injury when a shelf of toys partially collapsed, forming a tent over them as they huddled on the ground. Joshua Wohlford, his pregnant girlfriend and their two toddlers sought shelter at a nearby Walmart when he saw the tornado bearing down on their trailer. "Things were going as they were supposed to go." "There was a lot of strength in the leadership in the hospital and ER here," Pace said, referring to the protection of those still inside before all could be evacuated. He helped pull debris off two people outside the emergency room.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |