There’s something about a disaster that becomes personal even to those who are not damaged by it. Many people take a personal ownership of it, even take a peculiar personal pride in it even if their property stays dry and intact.
We’re seeing some of that in Jefferson City in the wake of our tornado a few days before the Memorial Day Weekend and the accompanying flooding. This is “our” disaster and we see and will see other disasters through our lens.
It’s not unusual. Those of us who remember the 1993 flooding measure floods in other parts of the country against that one and in some odd way find satisfaction in thinking, “Theirs isn’t as bad as ours was.” The Joplin tornado has become our measuring stick when we see reports of tornado disasters in other parts of the country. Theirs isn’t as bad as ours was.
Until the disaster takes off OUR porch, blows down OUR house, destroys OUR business.
OUR tornado took nobody’s life. It damaged about 200 buildings in Jefferson City, some of which will have to be removed because they cannot be repaired, but compared to Joplin it was a little thing.
Except it’s OUR thing. And now we will consider ourselves kin to Joplin and we will see reports of tornadoes in other places through OUR lens, not in terms of extent of damage but in terms of fellowship. We have now joined the fellowship of them.
We don’t know if the folks in Joplin, on hearing of the tornado that hit Eldon then Jefferson City, have thought inwardly, “Huh! We had it a lot worse than they did.” But it is likely natural that some of them would have evaluated our situation against the extent of their disaster.
We’re still waiting to see if our rainy spring continues, as it did in 1993, and pushes later flood crests that establish new references that end observations such as, “Yeah, it looks pretty bad. But back in ’93…,” the same way that the 1993 flood ended observations from the real old-timers that, “I remember back in 1951…”
In Eldon and in Jefferson City right now, though, the focus is on recovery. The comparisons with later disasters will come after the debris is cleared away, the buildings that can be saved are saved, and the buildings that cannot be rescued are bulldozed down and the lots where they stood grow new grass.
I haven’t consulted with Nancy yet, but if we win the big lottery jackpot(s) I think I’d like to offer one-million dollars to the Historic City of Jefferson, which has worked for years to revitalize East Capitol Avenue where some of the historic structures might become those grass-filled lots, to be used to supplement insurance payments to rebuild those damaged homes—even those now seemingly destined for destruction. Gutting the destroyed interior and building a modern inside structure while salvaging the historic exterior would be a goal worth some of those lottery winnings.
But I’m not going to win the lottery. Somebody else somewhere else always buys a winning ticket just before or just after I buy mine (I tell myself that). I think I will send a much, much, much smaller amount, though. And maybe others capable of greater philanthropic capacity will want to participate more grandly in saving what some think cannot be saved.
After all, it is OUR disaster. And part of comparing OUR disaster to those elsewhere in the future should include what we do now to save the things we are told can’t be saved.
History tells us an Act of God can be countered by godly acts that rescue people and the past from the worst that has happened.
I bought another lottery ticket a few days ago. And I also wrote a check.