Greg and Audra Miller are Colony natives who live a few miles east of Joplin. Their house was less than half a mile from Sunday’s destructive tornado that killed 126 people and injured 900. The Millers’ yard was littered with debris, including X-rays from the badly damaged St. John’s Regional Medical Center, papers and bits of tree limbs and lumber.
On Wednesday, the Millers and their 6-year-old daughter, McCall, took a tour of the devastation.
Audra, 40, is the daughter of David and Glenda Comstock of Colony. She works as a paralegal. David is the son of Janice Henegar, Iola, and Dean Miller, Le Roy. He is a vice president at EaglePicher Technologies.
Audra’s account of their trip:
SURVEYED the damage last night.
We heard they had the streets cleared so we decided to go in and see where we could get.
Amazingly, they had all streets cleared that we could see. We started down 20th Street and it got progressively worse as we went.
At 20th and Duquesne the gas station that I frequent — the one you have seen on the news where the people hid in the back, with someone recording the event — was so badly destroyed I don’t know how they lived through it.
As we went farther and farther, I could not identify businesses and homes that I had driven by thousands of times. I do not remember what was there. It is all in shambles like someone came along with a bulldozer and bulldozed them all into piles.
I was pretty emotional at this point and didn’t know if I could make it through the entire trip. I had warned McCall that I might break down and cry. She has already seen me torn up over this these past few days.
She said, “That’s OK. If you do I will hold your hand.”
At this point she reached her little hand into mine and looked at me like she would be strong for me.
WE CAME up to Walmart and Home Depot.
We look down the street where our baby-sitter lived.
We can’t believe she survived. Oh my God.
The entire 20th and Rangeline area is in shambles. Pizza by Stout gone. That hurts.
I wanted to see if Goodwill and Jim Bobs were still there but there was so much to see; I couldn’t see it all.
We crossed Rangeline and went on. We grew numb. It became miles and miles of the same.
It felt like a dream — a bad dream. Bob Sheldon’s home sits on 20th. It is destroyed. He works with Greg and is the son of the Sheldon family that was murdered in Carthage a year and a half ago.
How much more can he endure?
Huge apartment complexes in rubble. McCall’s old daycare gone. Dillon’s grocery store gone.
We saw the high school next, which is devastated, but what I really wanted to see was if the dance studio across from the high school where McCall takes lessons was still intact. It is not. That really hurts.
We all grow quiet. We travel along Maiden Lane toward St. John’s, knowing that this was supposedly bad.
We see the hospital as we have seen on TV and in pictures.
It is so much worse in person. We turn in front of the hospital and the houses are so badly destroyed we start realizing it is a miracle that so many people survived.
The neighborhood is flattened; the trees are all gone. It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off. I look around and realize my dentist’s office is gone. The string of doctor’s offices along there are all gone.
What will people do?
WE GO by Freeman Hospital to make sure it is all intact, and it is. We go up Schifferdecker and see more homes pulverized.
This looks to be where the tornado intensified and started widening.
We wind up back at Seventh Street and stop at Sonic to get ice cream. Shakey’s, our favorite ice cream store, is now gone.
We say we can’t go back through the devastation with our ice cream because it would disrespectful. I will probably feel that way for a while.
I CAN’T imagine the time it will take to clear it all. I suppose it will be bulldozed into piles and loaded into dumps trucks and hauled away. But to where?
There is so much debris that it will take a large area or areas to dispose of it all. It will probably be burned. The fire will burn for days.
Thank God this happened on a Sunday night, and no one was at school or these businesses or daycares, etc. It could have been so much worse.
IT IS AMAZING how much has already been done to clear areas and I have to say I am impressed by how well it is being handled.
I am also impressed by the number of volunteers from all over that have arrived without question to begin helping. I am also amazed by the people who have lost everything and remain strong and are happy to be alive and remain positive. I makes me proud to be from this area. Again, it does not seem like this is happening to our Joplin, Missouri.
I remain thankful that my family and I were spared.
