In Storm’s Aftermath, One Family Salvages What It Can

JOPLIN, Mo. — Sunday’s tornado tore the roof off the Johnson home on 29th Street here, ripped tiles off the floor and destroyed two of the family’s four vehicles. But it did not take the grand piano.

“We can save it!” exclaimed Drew Johnson, 21, amid a steady rain in the living room Monday evening as the family examined what was left of its house.

“I think it’s dead, baby,” said his mother, Patti, a part-time musician. “It weighs 800 pounds.”

“We have so many people here,” Drew Johnson insisted, motioning to the dozen or so college students who had come to help. “This is our best chance to save it.”

Five minutes later, the piano was sheltered under a blue tent across the street, a small victory amid so much despair.

The Johnsons lived directly in the path of the tornado and a mile to the east of St. John’s Regional Medical Center, which sustained extensive damage in the storm. Still, every member of the family survived, and they spent Monday like so many other families here, loading belonging they found into the backs of pickups. On Tuesday, they continued salvaging; they were especially happy to find Patti’s wedding dress.

Drew Johnson, a senior at the University of Arkansas who had just returned home for the summer, recruited his fraternity brothers to help on Monday, first at the home of his grandmother, half a mile to the northwest. With most of the ceiling gone, his grandmother’s place was less a home, and more a shell. Soggy insulation coated the living room like quicksand and a jar of peanuts floated through the kitchen.

“Go back into my grandma’s room and see if you can find any jewelry,” Drew told his fraternity brothers. Outside, he took care in loading a rocking chair into his uncle’s black pickup. The chair, he said, had once been owned by his great-grandparents.

“This actually held up pretty well,” he said, looking for damage to the chair. “We’re lucky,” he told his stepaunt Stacey Johnson.

“The only thing I couldn’t find was the marriage certificate,” Stacey said, sounding exasperated.

“I found it. I found it,” Drew said.

As the rain picked up and the skies darkened Monday night, Drew and the other students headed over to his own home. There, where Drew and his sister Lauren, 19, had lived since birth, the students began moving the piano and other furniture. They also carted out a number of bottles of liquor and several cases of beer, which were deposited in the back of a truck across the street.

Lauren Johnson used her iPhone as a flashlight to trek through the basement where she had taken shelter with her father when the storm enveloped their neighborhood.

She shook her head as she walked upstairs. “Our neighborhood, it” — she paused — “it ceases to exist.”

But then there was another small victory: the family’s dining-room table was made to stand upright. One of the table’s four legs was unaccounted for Monday, but the Johnsons were confident it would turn up — and on Tuesday, it did. Drew wrote in a text message: “My mom found it in her bedroom.”