Day Two

The most prominent blessing from this event was that we were not there!!!  We had two bags full of clothes and toiletries.  We had our computer with all our banking and financial information on it and our camera.  We also had each other and wonderful friends and family.  Our hotel reduced our hotel fee by one night so we only paid one night of our scheduled eight night stay (we stayed two nights). 

I woke up after only four hours sleep.  My phone died late the night before because I overly used it and also thought that I needed to let it die for my own mental well being.  My father called me early and warned me that Joplin was the top news story of the day.  I turned on the television and watched while I got ready for the day.  Throughout the entire day I cried off and on.  It was one of those things that just happened for no real reason most of the time.  I was so stressed out that I could not remember anything.  My husband got up and we went to breakfast and then went to our room to pack up.  During this time frame, Josh received a call from his employer to account for his location.  My husband is an avid board game player, http://boardgamereviewsbyjosh.com/, and was contacted by several fellow gamers that wanted to help.  While we were getting ready, he received an email that basically said that the board game community was going to try to replace as much of his collection as they could.  He was so humbled by this.  The generosity shown made us speechless. 

When we went to airport we were confirmed on our first flight and the second flight we needed to be assigned seats.  While we waited for our flight, we received an email with two pictures of our house from my father-in-law.  We were sort of prepared for this as we had spoken with our friends and family who saw the house.  Sitting in the airport, it is hard to understand the devastation at our house.  I cried again.  It was good to have early expectations so that we did not experience total shock when we arrived.  We were constantly looking at pictures on Facebook and the television at our gate.  Lots of speculations were still being discussed on the national news and there was more detail. 

We flew to Atlanta with no problems and were scheduled to get on our next flight in a different terminal forty-five minutes after our scheduled landing.  We made it to the gate on time and they already boarded the first class cabin and other elite members.  The gate staff then stalled us at the gate for twenty minutes and subsequently canceled the flight due to weather.  During this time, we met and spoke with employees with Wal-Mart who were flying into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Fayetteville, Arkansas where our flight originated.  They informed us that the store lost nine customers in the collapse.  The pictures they had were awful.  We were able to get on another flight to Tulsa which was again thirty minutes away in another terminal.  We made it and the gate attendant would not even acknowledge me at the gate.  I tried to be very polite and patient but wanted to make sure that I was heard before she allowed all the standby passengers on the flight.  She would not look up and kept repeating that she was closing the flight.  She closed the gate and referred us to customer service.  We have flown with Delta before and had experienced issues and knew to ask for a Red Jacket Supervisor.  We did this as something obviously went wrong.  He came to our gate and saw that somehow our seats were canceled on this flight and he rebooked us on the flight into our original airport later this evening.  We went and ate dinner and bought a phone charger since we lost ours at our house.  We answered phone calls and text messages of people to get updates.  Every where we went all day everyone was talking about the tornado; we could not get away from it and there were so many questions when someone found out we lived there. 

When our flight was delayed enough that we knew we were not going to make it back today, some of our friends were generous enough to go and get our computer out of our house.  Many of them were anxious for our arrival as they wanted to help us search the rubble.  We went to the next gate and waited for the flight.  It was again canceled and we went to customer service and had our flight rescheduled and we had to run to the next gate in another terminal again.  We made it and boarded the plane.  There was more bad weather in the area and our house contents were rained on almost continuously until this point.  Due to the weather, our pilot was redirecting our flight to avoid the severe weather.  We took off and halfway through the flight our pilot requested that the flight attendants take their seats.  Turbulence ensued.  It was nauseating.  After sometime passed the flight attendants prepared to land and took their seats.  The plane was fishtailing in the air...I did not know that airplanes could do that.  It was super scary, but I am sure not as scary as the tornado was.  We landed and left the airport without our luggage because it was scheduled to go to XNA.  We went and stayed with my in-laws and they provided us with clothes and a bed for the night.  We went to the store and purchased some necessities.  Josh responded to several emails and then we went to bed.  It was a somewhat more restful night than the night before. 

The blessings for the day were that we were alive.  We had a roof over our heads and bed to sleep on.  We heard from many of our friends and close neighbors that they were alright.  We had insurance.  We had a car.  Our house still had some structure left which meant that we could try to salvage some things.  We had the financial ability to pay for what we needed to continue.  We had running water and the resources to shower.  These were all important as much of Joplin this night and the previous night did not have power, water, or gas as these were all shut off when the tornado hit.  Gas was leaking in the city and it was very pungent.  Many of our friends were accounted for and knew of no fatalities at that time.  There were 116 dead at this point and over 1500 missing which was astounding and 17 people were found alive in the rubble.

These are pictures of roughly what our house looked like before:

The front of our house.

Our back patio.  The house is attached to the stairs on the left.

This is after the storm and was our first look at our house after the tornado:

I assume this needs no explanation.