ST. LOUIS – Nearly two weeks since a tornado ravaged parts of St. Louis and entire neighborhoods still look like disaster zones. The devastation is indescribable as an apocalyptic scene stretches across the Academy/Sherman Park neighborhood.
It’s eerily quiet, with the occasional sound of a homeowner working alone to clean up, using a chainsaw to get through the brush block his front door. A block away, Fred Thomas sits on his front stoop. The roof of his home has been blown off.
“Something I’d never seen in my lifetime,” Thomas said.
Across the street, Kim Brooks said, “It was like the tornado was in my backyard and it was beating on the back of my house.”
Brooks told us there’s been almost no signs of government help near her yet.
“I’m not really a political person, but I haven’t seen ‘em,” Brooks said, pointing to folks like Ali Rand, who showed up straight from a school event.
Brooks described people like Rand, “…helping us clean up, finding ways like at my house to remove a tree while my insurance is doing nothing.”
“We just need more bodies and more support,” Rand said.
Residents said the dumpsters all along the street and the heavy equipment are courtesy of private volunteers and not the government.
“This is run because people love this city and they have so much pride in this City of St. Louis, and even though I personally feel that our government has overlooked us right now, our citizens have not,” Rand said.
A cleanup powered by real people who are eagerly anticipating assistance from politicians who continue to assure them that help is on the way.