Tornado Aftermath - Monson, MA

[jawn galliano]

so last week, we had some tornadoes touch down around the state. the western part got hit the hardest, monson in particular got trashed -- the level of destruction there is pretty unreal, not something you really expect to see happen around here. my roommate's got some family that lives out there, since i've known them all for like ten-plus years and they were all pitching in, i decided to venture out there with them this week to help with the relief effort. i snagged a few photos while we were out there today:







first church, this is basically the nerve center of all the volunteer relief workers. as you can see, the whole steeple structure (which apparently housed a cell tower, i'm told) is missing, but most of the building was spared. between the displaced families and volunteer workers, there was just tons and tons of people in and out of there all day, i'm amazed at how well the whole thing has been run, considering it's all being done by people just kinda learning as they go.



some photos of the destruction in the residential areas around town:



















signs like these were all over the place -- from volunteers to contractors and construction companies, people have been coming from all over the damn place to help clean the town up and get everything back to normal again.

[^_____________^]

Well, fuck.

[jawn galliano]

i didn't even get any shots of the ruined houses/properties. people are pretty sensitive about it so i figured i may as well avoid pissing them off since we were there to help out in the first place. but there's sections that were in the direct path, all that's left is just downed trees and full houses'-worth of random belongings and trashed furniture and insulation and etc. strewn about, with no recognizable architecture left standing. really fucked up.



i also saw a van that had been impaled by a huge fucker of a tree, looked to be about two feet in diameter, like, it went in through the rear doors, poked its head out the windshield, and just stopped there.

[Abzu]

Reminds me of the Norricane we had a few years back, except yours was an actual tornado.



Norricane is a portmanteau of Nor'Easter and hurricane. I guess some very strong warm tropical air collided with a nor'easter. It happened in April '07 (same day as Virginia Tech shooting, actually, which pretty much killed all news coverage of the storm). The resulting storm had insane precipitation and 100mph winds. It did some serious damage. Power was out at my place for a week. Crews from Montreal came down. Rockin' good time.