New arrivals swapped intelligence on how to secure a spot on the school buses that would take them into the disaster zone.ĭanny Cheatham drove up the day before from southern Arkansas, his blue pickup loaded with chainsaws, gas canisters and work tools. On Thursday morning, hundreds of people converged on the volunteer center, itself a patchwork effort of the national service group AmeriCorps, the Red Cross and individuals just helping out. “Just because we don’t have anything,” she said, “doesn’t mean we should be depressed. The house where she was living was destroyed in the storm. Kinsley Matthews, 16, showed up Thursday morning at the volunteer center on the campus of Missouri Southern State University, hoping to find some way to help. These commuters have become, in effect, a large population of neighbors – who often have heavy equipment, chainsaws and trucks - close by and eager to help out.Įven some whose houses blew away want to pitch in. Its workday population normally quintuples, as people commute from the surrounding countryside. The city of about 50,000 sits smack in the middle of the country, flanked by an interstate highway and close to the intersection of four states. People who want to help simply find it easy to do so. Even by that standard, though, Joplin seems different - possibly due to its geography. In an age of continuous live television coverage, disasters typically draw a crowd of people wanting to pitch in. The city counted more than 600 volunteers who helped Wednesday, and more people were arriving Thursday, as they have every day since the storm struck
People from all over the country have donated time and equipment - including local construction companies using trucks to haul away tree carcasses, and a pair of Nigerian tourists who left New York for Joplin after seeing footage of the storm.
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