HODR's home base

HODR's home
Originally uploaded by FinanceProfessor

Here's the building where we're camping. It's the Newton Co. Emergency Operations Center and is made of stone ( a former armory), very substantial. There's a nice storm shelter in the basement. We've had a few tornado alerts and moved all the vehicles inside, just in case.

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Getting to Work

The morning after we arrived, we all rolled out to work at a 60 acre farm in nearby Granby, one of the towns that was in the path of the tornado. It wasn't until we drove out of Neosho that we began to see the effects of the storm. The 70+ year old farmer has been madly working to fix things since the storm and is just about worn out, so our arrival was welcome. We spent the morning removing debris from the fence line, righting posts and re-fastening barbed wire. A crew of chainsaw volunteers from Americorps cleared trees that had fallen on the fencing, and we pulled brush so we could repair the fence.



Here are some shots of things that got stopped by the fencing. Beer cans embedded themselves in the wire, roof tin and plywood actually hit hard enough that the wire sliced into them and left them hanging.


We were filmed by a news crew from the Joplin, MO, ABC affiliate station and they interviewed Aaron who is from St. Louis and thus a "local boy". Nonetheless, Aaron was left on the cutting room floor. Click here for article with video.



In the afternoon we arrived at the home of a local man who has five acres and a trailer home. Several of his children have trailer homes on his land and one of them was totally wrecked-- rolled over and transported 50 yards by the wind. We helped pile oak logs and brush while the owner cut the many downed trees in his yard. Then, armed only with crow bars and hammers, we disassembled the trailer wreckage and piled the debris next to the road in the hope that the county will pick it up and take it away. Obstacles included a healthy crop of poison ivy, spiders, rats, and poisonous snakes.

Headed for Missouri

I'm headed for Newton County, Missouri, to participate in the Hands On Disaster Response(HODR) tornado relief project. We'll be based in Neosho, MO. The area was hard hit by tornadoes on May 10 and we'll be helping the residents to clean up.

That will involve tarping roofs, clearing rubble, mending fences, and whatever else we can do to help out. Hands On will stay there about a month.

Bill Driscoll, Sr.(no relation) and I are driving the HODR mobile command vehicle from Massachusetts to Neosho towing a trailer full of tools and equipment. Currently, we're cruising along I-70 somewhere in Ohio, accessing the web via a Verizon gadget that uses cellphone technology. Having a laptop to play with really makes the miles go by faster. It also makes it really easy to do map work and to look ahead to find hotels and restaurants.