Category Archives: Disaster Relief

Observations from Missouri’s tornado zone

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Phyllis Freeman in Disaster Relief

Outside Irving Elementary School in Joplin, Missouri, the devastation following the May 22 tornado is hard to comprehend. ©2011 Phyllis Freeman/World Vision

Editor’s note: Joplin, Missouri, is a small town in the U.S. Heartland. Its official population is 50,150. But now, it is tragically smaller in every sense, after the May 22 tornado that left 122 dead, 750 injured, and more than a quarter of the town destroyed. Phyllis Freeman, our domestic emergency response director, is on the ground in Joplin. I went looking for a school and found Irving Elementary School. It was mangled, the bricks blown apart. You can only think about the children who lived through this, seeing the skies turn black, hearing the roar of 200-mph winds, and watching the tornado chew things up, literally. Then they emerged to find their home gone, not knowing what’s happened to...

World Vision responds to tornadoes in central U.S.

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Mindy Mizell in Disaster Relief

Scattered debris surrounds a damaged home in a neighborhood hard hit by a devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri May 23, 2011. Tornadoes tore through parts of the U.S. Midwest on Sunday, killing at least 30 people in Joplin, claiming another life in Minneapolis and causing extensive property damage in the region. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Mike Stone

Update, May 25, 3:44 pm: World Vision is also continuing its tornado response in Joplin, Missouri where our national domestic disaster director just completed an initial assessment of the neighborhoods impacted in Sunday’s deadly tornado. “The damage in Joplin is every bit as devastating as what we’ve been responding to......

Photo stories from tornado survivors

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Laura Reinhardt in Disaster Relief

Editor’s note: Here are a few of the latest photos from World Vision communicator Laura Reinhardt, in the American Southeast following the deadly tornadoes on April 27 that left survivors across the region without homes........

Disaster disadvantage [infographic]

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Jane Sutton-Redner in Disaster Relief

Last year’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti was all-consuming for a time, dominating the news and mobilizing compassion from all corners of the world. During those first few months, it was hard to imagine that Haiti’s suffering could fall off the radar. But shortly after Haiti’s one-year anniversary came fresh disasters—New Zealand’s earthquake and Japan’s quake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. Scenes of destruction in formerly functional cities, tragic stories, and the threat of radiation riveted media attention and provoked fears that something this bad could happen to us. (And then it did, with last month’s killer storms and tornadoes in the U.S. South.)...

“We’re all still alive”

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Laura Reinhardt in Disaster Relief

A child's stuffed animal amidst the wreckage in Birmingham, Alabama. © 2011 Laura Reinhardt/WV

Editor’s note: Last night, I received the following email from Laura Reinhardt, who is in Alabama: The man sitting next me on the plane looked out the window as we approached Birmingham, Alabama. He pointed out the path of destruction left by the April 27 tornadoes. “That’s the spookiest thing I ever saw,” he said. “It’s like someone took a giant vacuum cleaner to the earth.” Seeing it from the air and being kind of awed by nature’s power is one thing, but getting on the ground and seeing tin roofs curled up like ribbon, walls ripped away to reveal the inside of someone’s life, and then meeting people like 10-year-old Morgan Adams makes it all much more personal. Morgan...