Maryville, MO is not part of Tornado Alley, but you would never guess that with the weather we’ve been having for the past couple weeks.
Last week, we were in the basement waiting out tornado warnings two days in a row. Tonight, we’ll be in an enhanced risk area with the possibility of being in the basement one more time. Makes me wish we had a fully finished basement, preferably with a wet bar. Not that I drink, but it sounds cool.
I’ve been prepping for a class called Disaster Psychology, which I will teach this fall. The first module is all about defining disasters as opposed to smaller-scale emergencies. Disasters involve large to mass-scale injuries and often deaths. They overwhelm a locality’s emergency services, and often require state and federal response. The media responds with on-the-scene missives, often lamenting about the lack of response when the emergency response is actually robust. On the individual level, people’s lives are upended and touched with tragedy.
Knowing this makes it a little harder to feel reassured going into that basement. Knowing the strength of emergency response makes it easier. As a CERT-trained individual, I may be part of that response. Most likely, I would be a Red Cross volunteer in sheltering (I have a certification) or a disaster case manager (I have a certification there as well, at least in another county that offered them).
Most of our tornado damage here, however, has been slight, and I hope for our sakes it stays that way.
Words Like Me 