Keeping Calm and Carrying On, One Month Later
A little less than a month ago, a massive tornado ripped through my neighborhood and a huge swath of Dallas. I had assumed that the debris would be cleared within a few days and our lives could carry on as usual.
I was desperately wrong.
It turns out that when a major city is hit by a literal force of nature, it takes longer to dust oneself off and go back to normal than I anticipated. Much of my street still looks like Dresden, with massive stacks of limbs and debris waiting to be carted away, by whom and to where exactly I don’t quite know.
Just a few blocks away, at the retail center of my neighborhood, two out of four quadrants are entirely fenced up, with restaurants, banks, boutiques, bookstores, grocery stores, fast food restaurants, and pizza joints boarded or tarped up, with no word (that I’ve heard) on when they will reopen. On the other side of the intersection, where businesses have returned to some semblance of normal, shop owners are saying that people are staying away, assuming that they too are out of business.
But the worst part, by far, is the sky. There’s so much of it now. Until recently, this section of Dallas had amazing trees. We took the canopy for granted, of course, because it was simply always there, providing shade and giving our skyline definition and beauty. All of that has now been replaced by jagged branches, uprooted trees, and stacks and stacks of chainsawed tree stumps.
I confess that driving around certain parts of Dallas is, literally, traumatic. My heart starts racing, my palms get sweaty, and I remember the fear and the anxiety from the night of the tornado – when I had no idea how close I came to losing my home, as so many of my neighbors did.
My home sustained repairable damage (though we still lack “luxury” amenities like WiFi and satellite TV), but, just doors away from me, many homes were completely destroyed. It’s like driving through a neighborhood of roofless doll houses, with top floors ripped away and curtains blowing in the wind.
Several of my neighbors (who were miraculously unhurt, physically, in the tornado) have moved, knowing that the chances of their being able to rebuild in a timely manner are non-existent, given the demands on the local construction workforce (which was strained before the tornado).
And we continue to have would-be looters (often masquerading as utility workers) casing the neighborhood. One who snuck into my backyard was surprised to see me and a small fleet of friends camped out in my house with sun blazer lanterns in hand. Fortunately, he was caught, but many others have happily come to take his place. It is, needless to say, unnerving.
The experience has given me a tiny window into the lives of those who suffer through much greater traumas – those who live in war-torn countries, or whose entire islands were wiped away by a hurricane, or even those who live in desperate poverty or in crime-ridden areas.
Let me emphasize: I was one of the luckiest of the lucky. The tornado merely grazed my home, and I was unhurt. I have four solid walls and a roof. I have electricity. In comparison, I’m doing quite well. But if the mini-PTSD I experience driving by a destroyed shopping center is any indication, those who can never escape it must live in unendurable agony.
If you would like to help, I recommend visiting the tornado relief page of the Dallas Independent School District, which must now rebuild three schools. Not only that, the families of the students who attended those schools must cope with having their lives (and, in some cases, homes) uprooted. The vast majority – 86 percent – of DISD are students from economically disadvantaged homes, and the affected schools were no exception.
If I, as an adult who suffered comparably little damage, am this traumatized by the tornado, I can only begin to imagine how it has affected the children whose schools were destroyed.
As you go to bed tonight, be grateful for your roof and walls and electricity. I’ll never take mine for granted again.
