The sky grew darker and darker Monday as dusk faded into night. At 8:30 p.m., the clouds had coalesced into an ominous cinder-black mass that augured nothing but trouble ahead.
Then the sky opened up, and the rain fell forcefully, in a long painful torrent across the beleaguered O’Fallon Park neighborhood of North St. Louis.
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The tornado that pummeled the area Friday afternoon had shorn the rooftops of literally hundreds of homes and apartment buildings, making life even more miserable for thousands of people still trying to recover from the worst 10 minutes of their lives.
Just ask Deborah Conklin, 68, who recently moved into an apartment near the corner of Kossuth and Turner avenues, just west of Fairground Park and directly in the EF 3 tornado’s path.
“It was terrible,” Conklin said.
Tarps covered the tops of nearby apartment houses, but not the one where Conklin continues to live, days after the tornado heavily damaged, and nearly destroyed, its roof.
”So we had to use a bunch of blankets and stuff,” she said. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t keep the water out; some of Conklin’s clothes were soaked. But she was unruffled in retelling the story. “Then we had to move downstairs,” she said, “where it wasn’t so bad.”
Conklin is planning to move into a new place soon, and expects to do so with the help of the social worker who’d been assisting her even before the tornado struck.
Does she expect the neighborhood to recover?
”I hope so,” she said. “Everybody’s pitching in.”
The next morning, a few blocks to the south at the YMCA building in O’Fallon Park, a long line of cars slowly snaked in and out the parking lot as people dropped off supplies.
Scores of volunteers sorted the donated items into nearby stacks, then handed them off to people in another line of cars who came for essentials that include disposable diapers, bottled water, wet wipes, batteries, canned food, and snack bags.
Meanwhile, dozens of other volunteers clustered in small groups in the Y’s parking lot, where they picked up rakes and shovels, face masks, and work gloves, as well as bottled water for themselves, and then awaited instructions from their group leaders.
Two major missions awaited the volunteers awaiting deployment: clearing downed trees from sidewalks and streets, and getting food and water to elderly and disabled people who could not leave their homes on their own.
Aleidra Allen, who sits on the board of Action St. Louis, the group coordinating the tornado response at the Y, called the volunteer response “enormous and beautiful.”
At least 3,000 families have been helped so far, while 2,000 volunteers have pitched in since Friday, Allen said.
On Tuesday, Allen said she was not surprised that neither the state of Missouri nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency had shown up to offer a hand.
”It’s not a surprise to us, especially in the current social and political climate,” Allen said, alluding to the steep budget and personnel cuts inflicted on FEMA by the administration of President Donald Trump.
”We honestly didn’t expect them to respond,” she said. “But at the end of the day what we know is that we will always have our community’s back. So regardless of what anybody else was going to do, we made sure we’re taking care of our people.”
Allen said the storm victims still need many supplies, especially non-perishable food items that are in pop-top containers and don’t require a can opener. Also in high demand: flashlights, shovels and rakes, cleaning supplies, disinfectant wipes and all-purpose cleansers.
Allen said community residents were “traumatized” by Monday night’s heavy rain storm.
“To experience another severe storm and following what we just went through on Friday,” Allen said, “I think mentally and emotionally alone, it was a ton for folks to handle. And that has really been hard to recover from.”
Journalist Mike Fitzgerald can be reached at <[email protected]>
