The Power Of Wind Versus The Human Spirit
Whenever I have covered a disaster such as the Lawrence County tornado I am overwhelmed by the power of natural forces. You can look around you and see things that seem impossible and I am in awe of what a storm can do. Then I meet the people who have lost everything they owned and sometimes have lost loved ones or been hurt themselves and I am overwhelmed by another aspect of nature, human nature. I am always amazed at the quality of kindness that people who have survived a disaster show one another and even show me. They really have no reason to be nice to a member of the media but I have not run across anyone who was less than kind in a disaster zone with the possible exception of the emergency folks but that is understandable considering all they are dealing with.
As I covered the Lawrence County tornado I continually met people who maintained their dignity, sense of community and a level of kindness in spite of the disaster they had just survived. I don’t really know what inspires this but I have witnessed it through several disasters and I am still amazed. I think, at least in part, there is a cathartic effect to telling their story, a way of relieving the stress of having survived a horribly traumatic experience. I visited Ocie Thrasher’s home which was one of the first hit by the tornado. He had not been home but his wife was trapped in the rubble of their home which was completely destroyed. She was sheltering beneath a staircase which was blown away. For some reason, the floor collapsed beneath her dropping about a foot, there an nowhere else in the house, then the chimney fell over the top of her both pinning her down and protecting her. She survived and is going to be okay. Mr. Thrasher and his friends were having lunch on the tail gate of his truck when I arrived. They insisted I have a piece of pie with them. I can only hope that if a disaster ever overtakes me I would be as kind to others as these people have been.
We will be covering the clean up and reconstruction effort for a long time as people try and put their lives back together and I am sure the stories will keep on coming until one day when things will at least look like they are back to normal again. I am providing a few more photos of the tornado and the clean up effort. I guess I am still at a loss for words to truly describe what I saw and what I felt. As a kind of p.s. to this I want to say thank you to everyone who has left comments about the coverage of the tornado. I have been deeply moved by what you all have said. Thank you!
Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
