No Trespassing

Rowlett, Texas: a town that looked like so many others. Perhaps even the one you grew up in. Maybe the spaces between the houses were a little furhter apart. But the stores you expected were there. Hondas and Toyotas weaved seamlessly along with the occasional Ford or Chevy Pick up. So much like where you grew up.

Maybe.

As if in an awesome spectacle of irony, the day after Christmas the town happened to lie right in the path of a Tornado. Winds between 166 and two hundred miles per hour brushed away the feeble attmpts of man to control nature.

Sadly many neighborhoods in the path were ground zero. In the wake of this Tornado, just one of Nine that struck Texas that night, destruction seemed complete. The financial cost was heavy, and the human cost: eight lives were lost.

TV news and media covered the disaster. For a day... maybe two. But then, like so much it was put to the side. As I wanted to try to get my students involved in a community service project, I went out to find out how the area looked. As the pictures display, the cameras are gone, but the damage remains.

So what to do? Well I tried to find out what I could possibly do. A huge consideration is that my students are minors. This in turn limits their possibilities. Though I was able to make some headway, like most people, they are suspicious when you try to help them out. Also, remember, crisis does an excellent way of putting the blinders of Tunnel vision. People so desperate, so devestated, that they do anything possible to save what little they have left. Anything. Like putting a No Trespassing sign in front of a house torn asunder. Its a human reaction. Hopefully, my studetns will be able to reach out and help, if not in Rowlett, then somewhere in Collin.