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In reply to the discussion: My college town is in shambles, people I love are hurting, and some on DU only care about politics [View all]SheilaT
(23,156 posts)I don't have a TV, so I was not aware of this tornado.
In the early 1980's my sister lived in Hattiesburg for a couple of years, and I visited her five or six times while she was there. To be honest, I didn't get to know Hattiesburg all that well, since my focus was simply on my sister. But let me tell you about the incredible cream puffs at the Piggly Wiggly! And if there's more than one Piggly Wiggly there, alas, I cannot tell you which one it was.
I like to say that we live in a wonderful country with fifty wonderful states. While there are some that you could not pay me to live in, others love those states, and couldn't be paid to live in the ones I like. There are wonderful, good, and friendly people everywhere.
One of the things I loved about Mississippi when I visited my sister, were the fabulous water parks. You still have them, I hope. For those of you who don't know about them, the water parks are essentially state parks with some kind of a water feature, generally a decent sized lake. Usually there's boating and fishing and whatever other water sports are appropriate. The scenery was just gorgeous.
Anyone who has never seen the destruction tornadoes cause just have no idea. There's a town in Kansas, Greensburg, which was hit by a tornado on May 4, 2007. It was an F-5, the strongest tornado. I had several times in the years right before the tornado driven through Greensburg. It was just a wide spot in the road, quite frankly. Then I drove through two months after the tornado. The approach to the town was coming up a hill, and when I crested the hill I saw the damage and my mouth fell open and didn't close for at least fifteen minutes. It was as if the tornado had struck the day before.
Here's a picture taken twelve days later, and trust me, six weeks later there hadn't been any rebuilding yet.
I happened to drive through Greensburg several times over the next four years, and watched it rebuild. Hattiesburg will do the same.
And even though, as I said above, there are places you could not pay me to live in, if any one of those places gets struck by tornado or hurricane or earthquake or anything else, it is our DUTY as citizens of this country, to help each other out.