This past Friday, tornadoes ripped through our state. Monday morning, the headlines in the local rag (paper) were of volunteers who went down to help clean up the messes. I looked at my parents and said, I need to do this. They both simply said, "okay". Tuesday - yesterday - I started doing research. Stonewalled, mostly... Couldn't find anything online really telling me where I could volunteer to help. Finally, ended up calling the county court. They redirected me to a fire station, which I then called. They gave me the information I needed, and told me to be there this morning. This county is about an hour and a half, give or take, from my house. Seventy or so miles. (Blame road work and back roads for slowness.) I drove in, hauling a fair amount of butt, and went to the school where volunteers were being directed. Asked what needed to be done. Ended up at the other school, where I spent the day moving water, boxes of clothes, food, supplies... Everything. It was amazing how much had been donated. A semi load had shown up... yesterday? with a bunch of gear in it, and it'd all be unloaded and began to be sorted. By the end of the day today, the gym, which had been amazingly full this morning, was almost completely empty. We had so many truck loads to the different distribution points in the community that I lost track.
My entire body is sore.
Friday, probably Saturday, and all through next week, I'm going to go down there to help out. Try to help these people... get back on their feet. Hopefully. All through today, I'd talk to some random person, and the typical "hey, how're you" "fine, how're you" kind of talk would be exchanged. Yet... I was overwhelmed by emotions. These people are hurting in a huge way. They don't show it - I only saw a single tear shed all day at the school - but it's there, just beneath the skin. It only took a few minutes of talking for the man speaking to shed that tear, but... It's there. Most of these people have barely slept in the past five days, yet they're still doing everything they can. Even through everything, these people are strong. Stronger than I could ever possibly imagine... But the pain is still there. I knew it was going to happen - I knew I'd feel it, see it... I just didn't expect the sheer amount. My emotions literally shut down within the first two hours from being overwhelmed.
These people have had natural disasters occur to them before. They are no stranger to the pain, the anger, the fear of them. They know how to respond, how to get moving, how to make things happen, and how to get things back into shape. They're still hurting though, even though they try to hide it behind the "this has all happened before, it'll all happen again" mentality.
There are no words when a disaster like this strikes. I had no idea what to tell anybody today when it came to talking about it. I mean, what can you say? "I'm sorry." What's that even mean in a situation like this? We're talking about people who have lost their homes, their vehicles, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Right now, I can't even fathom that. The only thing that can really be done is to trek on, to try to make the best of the situation and repair things as best as possible - even if it doesn't seem like there's anything to repair. These people trek on, even though there were at least two deaths in their county, so much loss...
I wish I knew what to say to people after things like this happen. I've lost people before. More than I'd care to admit to anybody else, much less to myself. This is the second time in a week that I have had no words for a situation.
Earlier this week - Tuesday morning - my sister looks at me as she's getting ready to go to school and tells me that her best friend's older sister committed suicide the night before. I had heard many good things about this girl, and it left me rather shell shocked. After my sister walked out the door, my mom came back and hugged me, because that's all we could do... There just were no words. What do you say to somebody when they found out they lost one of their friends to them taking their own life?? I haven't managed to figure out what to say, still, and I've gone through this too many times myself. There's no good way to comfort people in these situations.
On top of all of this... I learned a couple things today that I'm not so sure I wanted to know. Although, it makes it easier to know where to put our money... Red Cross are a bunch of assholes. All I'm gonna say. And FEMA are too, but we knew that. People, if you're going to donate your money to someplace where it'll actually be useful, try to find out if a local bank (local to the disaster area) has set up a fund, and if there hasn't, try to find out through the local courts, government offices... Churches, even, and I rarely will say that. Still more likely to get the money to the actual problem, as opposed to just paying employees. I'm dead serious about this.
*Sigh.*
I want to see these people quit hurting so much, which is why I'm planning on going back down there as much as I can over the next week. I have class tomorrow, so I can't go then, but beyond that... next week is Spring Break. So definitely going down to the county as much as I can.
I wish I had the answers. I really do.
Until next time.
Peace.
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