Let me start by introducing myself. I am a twenty-six year old woman that previously resided in Joplin, Missouri. As a result of the recent devastating tornadoes, I am now homeless. This is a very difficult thing to admit. In this first blog I will start by telling my story and then continue in the following days, potentially years, to chronicle the events that I deem blessing in my life. These blessing will be a myriad of things which will be explained after the event occurs.
On May 21, 2011 I flew with my husband to Miami, Florida for a vacation that was to last for eight days. I recently graduated from graduate school with a Masters Degree in Social Work from Missouri State University. We were going to celebrate this accomplishment and our four year wedding anniversary. On Sunday, May 22, we woke up and had a very eventful day. We were staying at a hotel with a roof top terrace that overlooked a pool. I went out that morning to sunbath and read. My husband came to get me and inadvertently locked us out of the room for approximately 30 minutes. We then got ready for the day as were planned on going to a Florida Marlins game. We decided we would walk to the game as we thought it was just a little over a mile away. This was incorrect. We walked approximately one mile in the wrong direction and then had to turn back to get our car. We drove and ended up late to the game. The day continued somewhat uneventfully until around 7 eastern. My husband received a text message from a friend who was watching our house while we were gone. This text message stated that there had been a tornado in Joplin and they were leaving due to power outages. My husband immediately called to find out more information. We were told that they could not get to our house due to electrical lines and trees blocking roads all over town. My husband then called a couple of other friends asking if they would be able to go and look at our house as we did not know the full extent of the devastation yet. I went and got on my computer to look and see what was on facebook and other medias as well as googling "Joplin Tornado". At that time there were very few stories and only one saying that there was a confirmed tornado that hit Home Depot and St John's Mercy Hospital. I am aware that many of you do not know the geographical locations of these sites but I will tell you my house was directly in between these two sites that are approximately three miles apart.
At first my instinct was to assume that we were fine and that it had missed our house. I read on a friend's Facebook page that there was news coverage on the National Weather Channel and I immediately turned on the hotel television on my beach vacation, not something I had planned on doing. I saw St John's Mercy Hospital and did not recognize it. I remember yelling at the television to tell me the location of where they were standing. Almost immediately they pulled a local man aside and he stated that they were near 26th Street and Maiden Lane and they did a wide panning shot of the area. It was terrifying! I started crying. What else is there to say? This was 14 blocks from my house and I was 1500 miles away. My husband and I talked and I told him we needed to call our home owners insurance to start a claim. He said that we did not know anything and that it was too early. I start texting and calling my neighbors and friends. I get nothing when I call. Over and over I hear busy signals, messages that my phone call cannot go through, and voicemails. I start texting. I get responses. Josh got a text message around 8 from a friend that says, "I hate to tell you this as you should be having fun, but your house is gone." Josh called the friend and they talked. My husband politely got off the phone and said, "Thanks for checking and I really appreciate it." I am standing in beautiful Miami with my hands above my head in total shock. What do you do when you cannot do anything? Nothing...I wanted to bury my head in the sand and say, "No!!!!" Instead, my husband starts talking about going home. I am thinking, "to what?" There is nothing. I begin texting a very good friend of mine to see if she is alright. She reports that she is fine, her family was at her mother's home in the basement. She had her daughter, step daughter, step son, and husband with her and they were all safe. She said that the children's mother barely made it out alive, but that they were all safe. I sent out text after text with no response. They finally start to trickle in. I called my mother for moral support. She had nothing to say. She started the family phone chain. I had my husband call his family to tell them so that they would not hear it on the news. I broke a cardnial rule at our house and posted on Facebook that we were not at home and were safe because it was the only way to make sure that people knew. My husband called the insurance agency to claim the loss. He called the car insurance company as our car was reportedly the only way to identify our house and it was badly damaged. My husband called his father to see if he could go to Joplin the following day to get our personal informaiton from a water tight box in our basement. He said he would. We took phone call after phone call. Everyone brought relief and bad news. We called our airline to try to change our flight and Delta was very generous. Within only hours after the storm, Delta changed our flight and had us confirmed on a 1:30 flight the following afternoon. They did not charge us a fee for changing our itinerary and comped our luggage. We went down stairs to our lobby to discuss an early departure from our hotel. They said it would not be a problem given the circumstances and provided us breakfast for the following morning. We went up stairs to check on our friends. I was glued to my phone and computer all night waiting for more information and updates on my friends. I could not sleep. Fourteen hours had passed since we were told of our loss.
I finally fell asleep after relaxation exercises and a Xanax...
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