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Personal Narrative: Eight Days Of Hope

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Eight Days of Hope I dug through the rubble and trash that had once been someone’s home, as I shoveled the waste I could see a little girl’s doll, a family photo, and part of a baby’s crib. I knew this was much more than someone’s house being destroyed, but their life’s been flipped upside and torn apart. On April 27, 2011, an extremely violent EF5 wedge tornado, with estimated winds of up to 205 mph, struck the town of Smithville, Mississippi. The tornado destroyed 117 structures and damaged 50 others, killing 27 people and leaving many injured (Storm Watchers blog). It was not long before hundreds of people from all over traveled to the city to assist and do what they could. My mother, sister and I joined 1,858 other volunteers as we made our way to Smithville, Ms. with the disaster relief organization Eight Days of Hope. It did not take much time before I was assigned a job and put to work doing more than I even knew that I was capable of. Volunteer work can have a great impact on peoples lives and communities; I assisted first hand with the rebuilding of a church, cleaning up debris, and even seeing a family brought back …show more content…
Digging through the wreckage of the storm hit me hard, I witnessed the remains of someone’s home and their lives along with it, such as personal belongings and lost memories. With this much wreckage a lot a help was needed, my organization, along with other stray volunteers cleared a good bit of the main rubble. With this much debris, routes were blocked, and a bulk of it was in the way of the reconstruction of homes and the city’s electricity. Due to this many people pitching in, the town started looking better bit by bit, day by day. This debris caused great problems, unfortunately, this was not the main quandary that needed fixing after the

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