Florence Man Aides Joplin Tornado Victims

 David Bird of Florence took a summer trip a couple of weeks ago, but instead of packing sunglasses and a swimsuit he packed a chainsaw.

Like a lot of people on June 22, Bird—a team leader with the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services—watched reports from tornado devastated Joplin, MO.

Unlike most people, he decided to do something about it.

The next day, Bird got a call from evangelist Chris Wells, who he met just a week before at a sportsman’s banquet at Christian Assembly Church in Florence.

Wells had spoken at a church in Joplin, MO a week before coming to Florence and told Bird he was organizing a mission trip to help tornado victims.

Bird had never been on a mission trip before, let alone traveled that far from home; but after talking with his wife, Wendy, he said he “just felt like he needed to go.”

“It would have been easier to stay home,” Bird said. “But I felt I needed to help.”

With chainsaw in tow, he and Wells began the 14-hour drive West the next day.

Little did the pair know they would cross paths with a tornado of their own.

Three hours from Joplin, Bird and Wells came within 100 yards of a full scale twister in the road, narrowly escaping the funnel’s destructive path.

“Had we been 30 seconds later down that road we’d have gotten hit by it,” Bird said. “It gave me goosebumps, the kind I haven’t had since I was a kid. After, we stopped and looked back at what that tornado did.”

Feeling lucky, the two pushed on to Joplin and met the rest of their group. Right away Bird and the others went to work cutting trees that had fallen on people’s houses.

Later that day Bird walked a main street in downtown Joplin in what he described as a totally devastated area.

He called Wendy, who said she could tell there was something different in her husband’s voice.

“I was just weeping and crying and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t verbalize it,” Bird said. “You can tell there was so much hurt. You’d walk around and I’d see the same wallpaper that my son has in his bedroom, see the same destroyed toy that my daughter has or the same car my wife drives. This could have been my town, this could have been my family.”

As bad as it was there were signs of hope - literally. “God Bless Us All”, “We’re all okay,” “Praise God” and other inspirational messages were spray painted on what used to be people’s homes.

When Bird approached people to offer water or supplies, he said he wasn’t met with a depressing attitude but instead people saying “It’s all okay we’re gonna get through this.”

Five days later Bird made the trip back home to Wendy and their two children, Tyler, 4, and Savannah, 7.

Wendy said that when he got back Savannah told her she was proud of her daddy for going to help somebody else because “kids lost everything and he helped them.”

“It’s not about the high school or hospital that was destroyed. It’s those people. Now they have nothing,” Bird said. “There are needs that can be met in Joplin by everyone whether financially or physically. Needs are going to be there for a long time. This is not a short deal.”