Three weeks after a tornado touched down in Little Rock, Arkansas, Mike Shaw and his family picked up pieces of their home, branches and debris in their front yard. “We bought this house in 1979,” Mike said while looking at the remains of what had been home to his family for more than 40 years. “It puts a whole humbling experience on you, as far as what can be gone in just a matter of a minute.”

He will never forget when he received a call from his daughter on March 31. She was the only one inside the house when a tornado hit the neighborhood.

“I heard the sirens and didn’t understand her,” Mike said. “I was telling her to go to the bathroom or the back of the hall and she said ‘Dad, I can’t go anywhere and there’s probably no hall.’ She said it’s already hit, and all the walls have fallen down.”

As a father, Mike’s initial reaction was to jump in the car to go help his daughter. But in this case, that wasn’t an option; the devastation left by the tornado left roads impassable. Another family member was able to get Mike’s daughter to safety that night.

“It’s just a blessing that she was not hurt,” Mike said. “She was cut up, and she’s a little traumatized. She’s been through some storms now.”

By the next morning, the family was able to access the home and start to gather what personal items they could salvage. That’s when they saw volunteers with the Red Cross handing out water and talking with families. They saw other organizations step in to help their neighbors as well, “There’s just been armies of people from churches out here helping,” Mike added.

Since those first days, the family has come by periodically to clean up and find what items are unharmed. “There’s some old tools of my dad’s and stuff like that,” Mike said, “and you kind of think, well they’re sentimental, but I guess if it’s gone, it’s gone.”

Mike says he’s able to stay optimistic in the face of such loss because he’s reminded that things are just that: things. He’s thankful to have his family safe and by his side. “Some of that stuff that I thought was valuable, I guess God decided it wasn’t,” he said with a chuckle.

Through it all, Mike has seen the community he’s lived in for nearly half a century come together like never before.

“My son said, ‘You know we take a bad rap in Little Rock for crime and everything else, but these people are out here and they’re feeding people.’ They helped him with a big toolbox that he wanted to get out too, there were eight or nine guys who came and lifted the wall off of it and we loaded it up. That was just amazing.”

Red Cross volunteers stopped by to make sure Mike and his family knew the resources available to them as they continue through the cleanup process. Mike was grateful to know that help is there for him and his neighbors. He knows it will be a long road to full recovery for everyone who lost their homes to this devastating storm. “I pray for them,” he said. “It’s going to be tough.”