Any one wish to post thier thoughts about, comments on  or experience during the Tordado that recently touched down in Springfield?

Somehow seeing the damage in person is so much worse than seeing it on TV....

I agree with the comment that it is so different seeing it in person compared to TV. I watched the Weather Channel for days because it gave us (in California) the most coverage of what had happened in Springfield. However, when I visited in July, my youngest brother took me and my sister on "a tour" starting in West Springfield and ending in the neighborhood where I grew up.  For most of the tour the destruction we witnessed kept us speechless. Many times the silence was puntuated with an "OMG" but it was just plain hard to digest what we were seeing up close and personal. One of my brothers lives in our family home in 16 Acres. It is plain eerie standing on the street, looking at the house because his house was at the very edge of the tornado as it whipped through the neighborhood. Looking at his house from the street and scanning towards the right, everything appears normal - unblemished houses and trees so plush you cannot see the sky - but as you scan to the left, the trees are all...gone. Open sky assaults your eyes. Many tarps are still on roofs where trees were removed. At least one home has to be totally rebuilt, but all the others suffered enormous damage.  For me, in this neighborhood, it is the missing trees and the remaining stubs in the ground with splintered trunks and no tops that shocks me the worst because I grew up here and now the neighborhood I remember is GONE. Of course, many neighborhoods were hit much harder. We saw obliterated homes, homes knocked off kilter and leaning over onto others, roofs gone, huge trees thrown around like toothpicks. Everywhere, people were working on cleanup and fixing homes.  I remember thinking that at least there will be some jobs to stimulate the economy around here. And firewood should be pretty cheap for quite a while! It is a wonder that more people didn't die, especially because they were not ingrained with what to do in case of a tornado. My own mother sat calmly in her living room "waiting to see if the tornado was going to come." !!!!! My brother and his wife were trying with all their might to latch their sliding door only to see their back fence and a huge oak tree get sucked up by the tornado as it passed into the next yard.  Springfield has survived and will rebuild and flourish, but nature has a way of reminding us time after time that it can be terrible as well as bountiful.