World | USA
Obama commits to helping tornado-hit Joplin rebuild
US president celebrates spirit of volunteers who rushed to help
- AP
- Published: 00:00 May 31, 2011
- Image Credit: EPA
- President Barack Obama greets people as he pays a visit to the community that was devastated a week ago by a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday.
Joplin, Missouri: President Barack Obama toured the apocalyptic landscape left by Missouri's killer tornado, consoled the bereaved and homeless, and committed the government to helping rebuild shattered lives.
After days of focusing on the US relationship with the rest of the world, Obama on Sunday pivoted to the intimate domestic task of acting as healer-in-chief.
He was visiting survivors from the worst tornado in decades, which tore through Joplin a week ago leaving more than 130 dead and hundreds more injured. At least 39 remain unaccounted for, and the damage is massive.
A memorial service where Obama spoke punctuated a day of remembrance one week after the disaster, as authorities pressed on with the task of identifying the victims and volunteers combed through wreckage of neighbourhoods where nothing was left whole.
Air Force One flew over a massive swath of brown — a land of flattened houses and stripped trees — on its approach to Joplin. On the ground, the destruction was even more stark and complete. Obama said nothing in his life measured up to what he saw this day.
Community's stoicism
Yet he spoke, too, of redemptive moments, the stoicism of the community and tales of plain luck.
Obama celebrated the spirit of volunteers who have flocked to Joplin to help, the pickup truck owners who ferried people to the hospital and the citizens who lined up for hours to donate blood to people they didn't know.
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