Then the houses began to cry.
Whimpers, at first, then sobs. Within moments those sobs became a choir of pleas for help and finally, screams of agony. These were the cries of surviving individuals, trapped in the splintered remains of their homes.
As first responders, the Piotrowskis were all the help that was immediately available.
Amber Munson, whose home had been at 2212 S. Iowa Ave., woke up face down in mud and thought she was under her house. She was not. Her house had been leveled to its foundation and the fiberglass tub that had been her refuge moments before was now blown so far away, it would never be seen again.
But when rain and hail began hitting the back of her head, Munson realized she was not under the house at all, but out in the yard instead. She wiggled her way out of the tangled lumber, tested each of her limbs, and discovered they all worked. As she freed herself, she heard neighbors, crying for help.
“Ours was a ‘Norman Rockwell’ neighborhood,” Munson said afterward. “We watched high school ballgames together. We walked our dogs together. I knew who lived in each house.”
Her attention was quickly drawn to a nearby group home, where three men with permanent disabilities lived under the supervision of two caretakers. Someone was screaming loudly from that direction.
Munson made her way to that home and found three figures lying on top of a foundation, each of them stripped bare. One was motionless, one was swollen and moaning, the third bleeding and crying out in pain. Munson felt helpless, but compelled to do something. She comforted the injured men and scanned the horizon for anyone who could help. Nothing. Other neighbors were crying to be set free, but she could not bring herself to leave the three men alone.
‘My guardian angels’
Then, she saw the Piotrowskis.
“It was like a scene out of a movie,” Munson said. ‘The Piotrowskis were my guardian angels.” Munson told the injured men that she would get help and ran toward them.
Jeff spotted Munson running toward them, crying, and breathed a sigh of relief. One person, at least, was alive and unharmed.
“Are you all right? Where are we? What neighborhood is this?” he asked Munson.
“We’re behind Joplin High School. There’s some disabled guys that really need your help, right over there,” Munson pointed.
Jeff sent another urgent request for EMT assistance, with coordinates to Joplin High School added as a location. He then ran to the group home. Kathryn escorted Munson back to the truck.
When Jeff arrived at the group home, his first-responder training kicked in, giving method to chaos. He checked for a pulse in the man lying still; there was none. He moved on to the second man, who had a severe head injury. He could not be safely moved without assistance. Neither could the third. The best Jeff could do was give them comfort, covering and words of hope. His throat tightened and he fought back tears as he moved on.
At the next house Jeff found a woman trapped in her wheelchair, laying upside down and backward, clutching two pet carriers, covered in debris. He dug her out of the debris by hand, but she begged him not to move her.
“I think my neck is broken,” she said.
A second woman was in the home. He also dug her free, and she too asked to be left in place until emergency workers arrived. Her arm was severely injured.
It was then that he noticed a few other people helping.
A large black dog paced frantically on the fallen house next door, barking loudly. Piotrowski knew instantly that the dog’s owner was trapped below.
He yelled into the wreckage and heard an answer. Following the sound of the voice, he carefully uncovered the dog’s owner, and pulled him out. The man was dirty, but basically unharmed.
A woman’s legs were sticking out from the debris in the next house. Both men now worked together to dig her out. She was an elderly woman, still alive, though embedded in mud. After freeing her, they wiped the debris from her face with their hands so she could more easily see and breathe.
A few more people had joined in the search.
No emergency vehicles had yet arrived, but the rescue was growing. Relatives and friends were coming now; some on foot, others driving across the high school athletic fields to Iowa Street.
Jeff breathed a sigh of relief. They were no longer alone.
Kathryn found more blankets and covered other injured people. “There was a man bleeding from his ears, white as a sheet, just wandering,” Kathryn said. “I sat him down, hugged him and gave him a blanket. I told him he would be OK.”
‘Joplin Needs Help’
Munson was also helping now, alongside Kathryn, together doing what they could to help the hurting, sometimes stopping to give each other a hug.
As teams of volunteer rescuers began driving people off to hospitals on makeshift stretchers in pickup trucks, Jeff resumed attempts to call emergency vehicles to the scene, but phone lines over Joplin were down or jammed.
Using an Internet card on his laptop, he was finally able to get a call through to his friend Steve Piltz, head meteorologist and director of the National Weather Service station in Tulsa.
Steve answered.
“We are in a state of emergency, Steve. Joplin needs help. A massive tornado, at least an EF-4, maybe an EF-5 touched down here. Massive damage, massive injuries. Need ambulances. Can Oklahoma send any? Can you send 100 of them?”
Piltz looked at the radar and saw the debris cloud. “Oh my God,” he said. The debris clouds on the radar image were enormous.
“You got it Jeff. I’m on it,” Piltz replied.
Piltz sent the storm chaser report immediately. Within 15 minutes of the call, Task Force I Search and Rescue teams from both Oklahoma and Arkansas were dispatched and on their way to Joplin.
Jeff could breathe again, and stop counting. Help was coming, more was on the way.
‘Part of Joplin’
Throughout their work as storm chasers — 35 years, hundreds of tornadoes — the Piotrowskis had never seen anything like this. No storm has affected them emotionally more than any other storm they have tracked in their entire storm-chasing career, Jeff said.
“We became part of Joplin that night,” Kathryn said. “We will never be the same.”
Desperate moments: Spotters watched storm build Local News The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO