Kunkler’s ties cause her to volunteer
Damaris Kunkler, program coordinator for Thrive Allen County, was one of the first to respond to victims of the Moore, Okla. tornadoes.
She took to Facebook and placed a notice in The Register saying she was going to the Moore area and needed donated items.
“I got exactly what I asked for,” Kunkler said.
From the get-go donations, including water, Gatorade, snacks, work gloves, diapers and much more, were dropped off at the Thrive office; and before she knew it, her Yukon was filled to the brim for the trip. Kunkler has family and friends in Oklahoma (she moved to Iola from Norman, Okla., in 2009), many of whom were affected by the slew of tornadoes, though none seriously injured. Her daughter, Elysia, lives in Norman, and Kunkler said she needed to see her desperately.
“She’s been spending too much time in storm shelters,” Kunkler said. “I just needed to give her a big hug.”
Kunkler said she was blown away by the amount of destruction in the area.
“It’s like a war zone,” she said. “It’s strange to see what what was once there is now gone. It breaks your heart.”
The scene of the devastation was eerie. Landscapes with nothing but storm shelters still standing like statues. The storm shelters saved countless lives, she said.
Kunkler said she had seen the news report of the woman and daughter who had been killed in the 7-Eleven store in Moore, under the false pretense it would provide protection.
“It’s sad, that they had that false hope,” Kunkler said. They drove by the destroyed 7-Eleven the following day, Kunkler said noting to her daughter of the news report.
They both helped in Newcastle, Okla., in a distribution center for different goods. They spent Memorial Day weekend loading and unloading trucks full of supplies and aid. She said she was amazed at the amount of coordination that went into the volunteer efforts.
“Everyone was really impressed with how fast the response was,” she said. The volunteer centers had maps of the area, detailing what type of help was needed in different areas. Although, she said it was difficult working with people who had no home to go back to after the holiday weekend.
“I believe some of the people we were working with were stranded,” Kunkler said with a pained expression on her face. She returned to Iola the following day — she has still been getting calls from Allen Countians, offering donations for the tornado victims.
Hawk brings expertise to tornado victims
“Only a handful” of people came to help rebuild Bob Hawk’s father’s home when it was hit by a tornado in 1942. HAWK SPENT seven years in the Air Force as a meteorologist, after receiving his meteorology degree from the University of Kansas. He then did typhoon reconnaissance in Guam from a helicopter as well. HAWK SAID he is an assessor of damage when he volunteers. He travels to people’s homes, and decides what resources and people are going to be needed to get them back into full-form.
“I think that troubled him until the day he died,” Hawk said. “I don’t want anyone to have to go through that.”
Hawk is no stranger to disaster areas, so when he was asked to respond to Oklahoma two days after the tornadoes hit, he was on his way. He, along with volunteers at Samaritan’s Purse — a disaster relief organization started by Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham — responded to Shawnee, Okla., on May 23. Tornadoes plowed through the area on May 20.
“We had big storms and bigger storms,” Hawk said of his experience chasing the monster storm cells.
He has also assisted with Samaritan’s Purse following Hurricane Katrina, an ice storm in Missouri and the 2007 flood in Kansas. So, when he was asked to respond to Oklahoma, there were no surprises.
“In the Army, we always referred to the weather as a neutral player,” he said. “It affects the whole gamut of homes.” As he and the other volunteers drove into the the area, they saw large homes, trailers and businesses flattened.
Though Shawnee did not receive as many headlines — there were two deaths reported in the storms — it experienced some of the most harrowing damage and destruction.
The volunteers brought in a “NASCAR-style trailer” packed full of supplies and equipment to aid in the process.
“The damage was just so random,” Hawk said, sitting in his home after his trip down south. He said there were some homes destroyed while next door would be a building fully intact. He attributed the sporadic destruction to smaller, intense vortices that follow along with a tornado.
He said they were helping a woman whose son had yet to find his mobile home.
“They still don’t know where it is,” Hawk said of the trailer. “Gone.”
“The level of destruction, power, it defies convention.”
“I think it’s as important to be able to talk to people as it is to do the actual work,” he said.
He said the “raw emotion” of the people affected touched him deeply. One woman in particular made an impression on him.
“You could tell she was at her breaking point,” he said. Her home had been nearly destroyed and her life was lost in its wreckage. She was badly sunburned from cleaning up in the sun all day, to the point where she had to seek treatment from the hospital.
“Her husband had to take her keys away, because she couldn’t drive,” Hawk said.
Then, when she came out of the remains of her home and saw all of the volunteers in orange shirts, Hawk said a smile appeared on her face, from cheek to cheek.
“It was like a circus atmosphere,” he said. “There were orange shirts everywhere.”
Another man had his roof tarped by the volunteers — he had no insurance, and a laundry-list of problems from the storm. But he said the man didn’t care about all of those things, just that he had someone there who cared.
“He said, ‘they felt like brothers, I wanted them to stay,’” Hawk said. “And then he just began to cry.”
It’s moments like those that bring people in disaster situations hope, Hawk said.
“We’re like a jump-start battery, we can’t do everything,” he said. “But, you help people realize there is hope.”
On a single day in Shawnee, Hawk said Samaritan’s Purse dispatched 456 volunteers to help victims. Those numbers represent just one of the organizations, out of the dozens that responded to the efforts in central Oklahoma.
Thompson moved to help colleagues
Grace Thompson couldn’t help but get emotional when she sat down in the manager’s office at Walmart on Tuesday afternoon. She, along with 85 associates from different stores across the area, had spent five days in the tornado-battered areas of central Oklahoma.
Walmart manager Jeff Livingston asked Thompson to go on 24-hours’ notice, in order to fill in for associates who had been injured and/or displaced by the storms. She spent May 19-24 working in the store in Moore, helping to put people’s lives back together.
“It was quite an eye-opener,” Thompson said. “Of course, they didn’t have homes.”
People were flooding to Walmart to start over, she said, they literally had nothing but the clothes on their back. Stores in the area were donating sandwiches and water for the victims of the tornadoes, which tore through the area on the afternoon of May 20.
One of Thompson’s first tasks was to prepare the store for the influx of customers that would be coming through the door. She and her co-workers spent 11 hours cleaning the store on the first day. Then the trucks came.
“We had to unload 27 trucks in two days,” Thompson said. “We couldn’t keep food on the shelves.”
But, working in the store gave Thompson the opportunity to speak with those who had been affected, and let them share their stories to her.
She told the story of a woman whose son was in the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore.
“Her child came out without a scratch,” Thompson said as tears welled up in her eyes. “She came to Walmart to donate as much as she could to people who were not as fortunate. Someone was watching out for her child that day.”
Luckily, the Walmarts in the area were not as severely affected as some of the other buildings, which gave them the opportunity to help more people.
“One of the Walmarts had a 1,000-pound air-conditioning unit lifted off of its roof,” she said. Another house behind their store had a car lodged into its second story, upside down.
While she was in Oklahoma, she stayed in the La Quinta Inn in Oklahoma City. She said the hotels opened their doors to victims without homes.
“The hotels were very generous,” she said. She said they even let people bring their pets — she saw turtles, gerbils, cats and dogs running around the halls of her hotel.
“I don’t even know how a gerbil survived those storms,” she laughed.
The rest of her week was spent helping those that needed supplies from the store and making sure everyone found their way.
“They (Walmart) really care about the communities,” Thompson said. “There were a lot of associates who couldn’t make it to work.”
But, she said there were many people who were fortunate to have their lives, more than anything.
“They were alive, that’s all that matters,” she said. “You can’t replace lives, but you can replace things.”
And as people waited in line to gather their things, Thompson did what she could to help.
