“I was taking a makeup test in Environmental Science when everyone came out into the hallway and had to sit facing the wall for the tornado drill. I heard Mrs. Owen and another teacher talking about the tornado. Mrs. Owen literally says it’s on Rodney Parham and I’m like ‘that’s literally my house’ so I was hoping everything was okay but I didn’t think much of it. When we got out of school, I was driving home and I was stuck on Reservoir Rd. because they had closed the roads.

They wouldn’t let anyone through [into my neighborhood] so I had to park at the Cigar Republic. I had to walk into my neighborhood to get to my house and I saw all of these houses destroyed. Some just had trees fallen in the yard, or part or all of the roof missing. Some houses were completely leveled and all that was left was the steps up to their house.

I was walking through my neighborhood and people were just out in the street walking around and some people were crying, and seeing them with no house was just like ‘Oh my gosh.’ It was really scary. When

I got to my house I felt kind of guilty to be honest, because my house was completely fine. All the houses on my street and the street before mine were completely fine, so I was really thankful but I almost felt bad because we weren’t even affected by the tornado, and my street was also on

e of the first streets to get power back. My parents were in Branson actually, but I was on the phone with my dad alot on the way home because I couldn’t figure out how to get into my neighborhood, and they came home early on Saturday.

Being home alone, I actually talked to a lot of people in my neighborhood that I hadn’t talked to in a long time. That’s one of the good things that came out of this was that our neighborhood community is a lot more connected.”