Joplin Tornado

My mother was in the killer F5 tornado that hit Joplin last week. She was working at St. John's in Joplin and had about 5 minutes warning to help move her patients to their designated area in the psych unit. She said it hit with explosive force, lasted about 3 minutes and was the scariest moment of her entire life. After it was over the electric doors that lock the psych unit were stuck shut and they had to wait for the fire dept or somebody (she wasn't sure who it was) to come get them. After it hit, the floors above her (she was on the 5th floor) section of hospital were gone and it was raining in on them. It was a harrowing walk over the roof and glass and then down a dark stairwell. As soon as they were outside they were ordered to run because of the natural gas leaks. Along with the staff and patients they all found their way through a mile of rubble to a half destroyed church which they used as a temporary shelter. Luckily, mom, the psych unit staff and all of the patients were fine. During her evacuation to the shelter she was interviewed by the local CBS affiliate and the next morning was even interviewed on our local CBS station--KMOV channel 4! I had just looked at radar about 10 minutes before and texted my mom and sister (who lives in the JPL area as well). I noticed that the cell on radar was exploding rapidly and had a dangerous look about it. I couldn't get a hold of mom, but Lisa (my sister) called her work number and relayed my message to mom not to leave work early (she was scheduled to leave at 6). About 20 minutes later my sister told me that she heard the hospital had suffered a direct hit. We finally got a hold of mom about an hour later and then knew that she had survived, but she was totally freaked out and incoherent on that first short phone call. Listening to the scanner of Jasper county online I kept texting my sister the addresses of the shelters and after a harrowing search (in which she saw lots of death and destruction) she found my mom about 11:30 and I spoke with her again about midnight. She couldn't find her car for several days, but located it on Friday and as you can see in the picture, it wasn't in good shape. It literally looks like it had been driven to hell and back. No way she would have survived in the car and thank God she wasn't in it! I have felt pretty helpless up here in STL, but we are going to help my mom get a new car as soon as her insurace money comes in.