There is an emotional see-saw taking place in Picher right now, from the tears of joy of surviving Saturday's tornado to the torment of what was lost.
From above, it's a jaw-dropping view -- Picher, what's left of it, from atop a chat pile. The destruction is so widespread and the images are numbing from afar. It's the teddy bear, the skateboard, the quilt that make the chaos mean something.
"He was here?"
"He was right here. All this stuff fell on top of him..."
Larry Bowling's 76-year-old dad barely got a scratch. But, the roof of his home was blown off and his pickup truck blasted 100 yards away. Wood from what used to be his home was splintered and scattered up and into the hillside.
"It's a miracle he even came out of this," Bowling says.
But, for every ounce of joy, there is an equal amount of torment.
One of Shari Cody's aunts barely survived.
"She's got both arms are broke, both legs, an ankle, her back is broke, she's missing a foot and has a ruptured spleen," Cody says.
Shari's other aunt died protecting her mother. Grandma, whose home is now a concrete slab, is also in the hospital. They waited as long as they could before breaking the news.
"They told her today because she remembered her being there and remembered her laying on top of her. So, the doctor told her they'd better tell her because she knew something was up because she wasn't there."
This community is already extremely tight-knit because of its small size. Now, what's left of it is literally intertwined. We spoke with a 75-year-old woman whose home was destroyed. She was able to find some family photographs ten blocks away.
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