How Can We Help Tornado Victims?

It’s easy to quit reading a news story that disturbs. It’s every bit as easy to switch channels from footage of victims whose plights make us uncomfortable, but I try to envision what it’s like to lose everything you have in this world in the blink of an eye.
As this column was written, the nation was seeing photos of upside down cars, sticks of lumber that once were homes and stunned people rifling through what looked like trash heaps that held their possessions after more than 40 tornadoes swept across the South and Midwest. As of that time, 23 deaths had been attributed to the twisters, the worst in Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe’s memory, or so he told ABC News in a televised report, “I have never seen a storm like this.”
The Shreveport (La.) Times reported an F2 tornado “just west of Plain Dealing in north Bossier Parish. An F2 tornado can contain winds up to 157 mph.” That tornado felled a massive tree into the home of Benji Johnson, who told the Times’ reporter “The tree fell two seconds after we got out of the room. The room came down on us. I had to dig our way out just to get us out the door.”
They were, indeed, lucky, as were many others, who shared with reporters similar stories of cheating death as families clung together, praying, as did one father “Please, God, save our family.” As the teenage daughter recounted that night’s terror she uttered the unthinkable, “We’re blessed. We lived.”
In Vilonia, Ark., a town I never knew existed, just three years and two days before, a twister followed nearly the same path as the one last week. As Vilonia’s Mayor James Firestone told a TV reporter as they slowly walked through the ruins, “We’re still a community of Vilonia.”
Tornadoes caused widespread destruction including Louisiana, Nebraska, Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Arkansas, North Carolina. Among the victims, at least two were children. Outside Little Rock, Ark, a swath of demolition a half mile wide was shown in an aerial view.
Another family was spared in the shelter of their “safe room,” only to emerge and find nothing left of their home or possessions. Imagine how that would make you feel.
Try to imagine your hometown so devastated, all its landmarks gone, that you could not tell where you were standing. Gone is your home, possibly your business or place of employment, the food store, the bank, the doctor’s office, your place of worship, all just vanished? Few of us in Cape May County ever experienced such an extreme loss, glad that we escaped with our lives, with the clothes on our backs and nothing else, no money, no credit cards, no family pictures, nothing, just your body breathing and the ones you hold dear safe.
Such disasters seem to be happening closer together all the time. Yes, it’s spring, and that’s tornado season in the heartland, but how does a life get knit back together after such a magnanimous event?
Not too long ago, employees of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency were temporarily stationed in this county helping file claims for damage done in Hurricane (or Superstorm to be politically correct) Sandy. Some of our residents experienced terrible damage to their homes and second homes in that storm, but not nearly what was experienced north of here, in places like the Borough of Mantoloking, Ocean County which was decimated by Sandy.
Those of us who were unscathed in Sandy find it difficult to hear stories of people who are still not completely restored from that hurricane. Horrors of insurance claims denied and reconstruction that had to be undertaken evade us. That is an old story, just as the tragedies of the tornado victims will be, probably as this column is read. Forget those poor souls in Arkansas and Louisiana, Alabama and Nebraska, they’ll be fine, the federal government “or someone” will take care of them.
Who will that “someone” be who lends a hand to lift the splintered wood and sort through the debris to find the heirlooms for those displaced families? Yes, there will be federal help, and the American Red Cross, but my guess is, there will be small groups, perhaps from churches and clubs that know what it’s like to lose everything. As after Hurricane Katrina, members of the Mid-Jersey Cape Rotary Club traveled south to directly and personally aid some victims in the most affected area, so other groups will do what they can to lend a helping hand to tornado victims. And that will be the aid that is most remembered by victims.
At times such as these, when lives of good people are torn to shreds it is helpful to recall a quote of President Richard M. Nixon, “We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.”
We remain a nation ready to help our neighbors in need. If there was ever a time to help, it is now in those devastated towns, most of which we have never heard uttered. We can help, or we can change the channel, quit reading and forget the anguish, suffering and pain our brothers and sisters experienced. It’s times like this, I wish I had a tractor trailer, a CDL license, and time to gather aid and drive it to those folks who lost everything except the clothes on their backs.