By Carl Manning

As Jefferson City, Missouri, Mayor Carrie Tergin was getting ready for bed on May 22, 2019, she heard the tornado warning sirens going off. But, like most people in her town, she wasn’t overly concerned.

“Most people for years had felt safe because of the surrounding hills and the river nearby, but this time it happened,” she recalled on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the EF3 tornado that first hit Eldon and then quickly moved north to strike the heart of Missouri’s capitol city.

After the tornado struck homes and businesses that night, Carrie was swamped with telephones calls from police, fire and emergency officials, along with individuals wanting to know what had happened.

“People were in a state of shock, but the first thing for everyone was taking care of their neighbors. The first thought was concern that everybody was safe,” she said. “We were very fortunate that no lives were lost.”

One of the first organizations to respond was the American Red Cross, who worked with its many partners in the coming days of the disaster recovery operations.

“We needed all the organizations to come together,” Mayor Tergin recalls. “The Red Cross was prepared and was made for days like that. It was extremely useful to the success of the recovery with the distribution of aid and making sure things got done.”

Shortly after the storm struck, Pam Protzman and other Red Cross volunteers worked with local partners to set up a shelter quickly at the Thomas Jefferson Middle School for those impacted in her hometown.

“My goal was to get people out of the rain and into a safe shelter and get them dry. It was past midnight,” Pam said.

By the next day, the school has been fully transformed into a safe place to stay with sleeping areas, showers, food, water and medical care. Workers at the school stepped up to provide food from the school cafeteria for those first days.

In the coming days, the Red Cross and its numerous partners provided the assistance needed to help those impacted, providing more than 1,000 overnight shelter stays, more than 900 meals and hundreds of personal care kits.

Many people showed up at the shelter with their pets, which weren’t allowed to stay there. Rather than leave their pets, people often would sleep in their cars with them or simply strike out on their own.

So, to accommodate those with pets, the Humane Society of Missouri based in St. Louis brought a kennel on wheels and parked it outside the shelter entrance, providing 36 living areas for pets plus food and medical attention if needed.

“It was imperative to have partners during the response,” said Rebecca Gordon, executive director of the Red Cross Central and Northern Missouri Chapter that includes Jefferson City.

The most extensive damage from the tornado was in Jefferson City, where 33 people were injured and 516 homes were damaged, along with 80 government buildings and 82 businesses.

While the damage in nearby Eldon was much less, the Red Cross also was quick to provide a safe place for those displaced there utilizing the help of its partners. The tornado had cut a path through the town, uprooting trees and damaging homes and buildings.

Red Cross volunteer Tom Shands and his team quickly set up a shelter at the Eldon Community Center and for more than two weeks he worked as the night shelter manager. For him, one of the important things was listening to those staying there.

“The more they talk about their losses, the less the trauma is pinned up inside them and the easier it is to recover,” he said.

Lincoln University in Jefferson City provided space to set up a Multi-Agency Resource Center (MARC) where the Red Cross and its numerous partners, from state agencies to private charities, could provide one-stop service for those in need. A MARC also was opened at the Church of the Nazarene in Eldon. A wide range of support was available, such as emotional and spiritual care, information about housing, medical and financial assistance and replacing official documents like driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

Among those helping at both MARCs was the Adventist Community Services, whose members served as ambassadors for those seeking assistance. Dressed in yellow shirts, they escorted clients through the process to ensure they received everything they needed.

One major partner for the Red Cross in Jefferson City over the years has been the United Way of Central Missouri. After the tornado, they helped coordinate volunteers and handled spontaneous donations such as food and clothing.

“We’ve had a longstanding partnership with the Red Cross and we are proud to lend support when any tragedy strikes. We are lucky to have the Red Cross here to help,” said Lee Knernschield, president of United Way of Central Missouri.

Some partnerships were spontaneous, like the one created by 11-year-old Garrett Sommerer. With the help of his mother, Heather Irvin, he sold five gallons of lemonade at a corner stand near his home. He raised $320 which he brought to Thomas Jefferson Middle School shelter to donate to the Red Cross.  It was the type of generosity seen throughout the community as residents worked to rebuild their lives and took time to help those in need.

One of the greatest strengths of the Red Cross is collaborating with partner organizations to provide assistance to those affected by disaster. By working together with local agencies, the Red Cross efficiently delivered critical recovery services to those who needed it most in the aftermath of the central Missouri tornado incident of 2019.

If you would like to become a Red Cross volunteer to help those in need during times of disaster, go to https://www.redcross.org/volunteer.

By Susan Gallagher

Tom Shands is an honest-to-goodness, spur-jingling, hat-wearing cowboy — and a passionate volunteer for the American Red Cross.

After nearly 49 years of Red Cross service, he’s made his mark on this storied institution. A long-term resident of Jamestown, MO, where he and his wife, Judy, run a horse farm, Tom was among the first Disaster Response volunteers called on May 22, 2019. That day, a devastating series of storms spawned multiple tornadoes across central Missouri.

The tornado touched down about a mile southwest of Eldon, MO, carrying winds of more than 100 miles per hour. The storm cut a path through the heart of the town, tearing up trees, ripping roofs from homes, and hurling debris. 

Tom quickly set up a Red Cross shelter in the Eldon Community Center. His team provided access to food, showers, electricity, and even laundry for around 40 residents. For 19 days, Tom served as the night shelter manager, sleeping on a cot and listening to stories of loss.

“One of our most important jobs is to listen and allow individuals to get whatever has happened out,” he said. “The more they talk about their losses, the less the trauma is pinned up inside them and the easier it is to recover.” 

The Eldon tornado was not his “first rodeo.”  Tom has spent so many hours volunteering for the Red Cross that in 2014, he received his chapter’s Volunteer of the Year Award from the Red Cross Heart of Missouri Lifesavers. A veteran of dozens of Red Cross deployments, he has two vests full of pins marking his service in locations ranging from California to Georgia and Hawaii to Florida and Louisiana.

“I have my shelter vest that I call my bling vest because there are so many pins,” Tom joked. “Then I have my vest for the many fires and other disasters I have gone to when called out on a regular basis.”

Dating back to the early 1900s, Red Cross pins have become badges of honor for volunteers who have given years of service and completed important projects. Tom’s pins are placed between the American flag and his U.S. Navy Seabees pins. A Vietnam vet, Tom spent six years in the U.S. Navy and 20 years in the National Guard. 

A native of Artesia, New Mexico, Tom grew up in Granite City, IL, but he has lived in central Missouri since 1969. He spent 37 years working in various roles producing transformers at what is now the Swiss corporation Asea Brown Boveri, or ABB.      

In 1974, Tom volunteered to become the plant’s first aid and CPR instructor. He was so good at it that he was asked by the local Red Cross chapter to become a volunteer first aid instructor. He moved on to the Disaster Action Team and became certified in damage assessment and shelter management and has served as a shelter manager during several disaster relief operations.

He is known as “Cowboy Tom,” and wears his Stetson wherever he goes.

By Susan Gallagher

American Red Cross volunteer Don Barnett can assemble data, draw correlations, and determine what is essential and what is just noise. But the compassion American Red Cross volunteer he feels for the citizens of his adopted hometown is what really stands out. That was never more true than immediately after the 2019 tornado disaster in Jefferson City.

After spending his childhood moving from state to state, living in Illinois, Texas, California, Washington, Don spent his high school high school years in Massachusetts. But since his family was from Independence, KS, he headed there after high school to attend college and live with his grandparents. Then, like his dad, Don joined the Air Force.

After military service, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology and became an expert in statical analysis, planning and research.

“I began my career as an analyst at the Missouri Division of Employment Security in Kansas City,” he said. “I moved to Jefferson City with a job at Youth Services, which is responsible for the care and treatment of youth committed to custody by juvenile courts. I then spent many years in Jefferson City evaluating energy efficiency programs for the Department of Natural Resources.”

He retired after 29 years in state government, and after watching television news showing Red Cross volunteers helping others, he joined up in 2009.  Since then, Don has been an active volunteer for the Jefferson City-based Red Cross Central and Northern Missouri Chapter.

During his Red Cross volunteer career, Don has responded to 216 fires as a Disaster Action Team member. He has also deployed many times to disaster relief operations all across the country, driving emergency response vehicles, and he is a whiz at damage assessment — determining where the worst destruction has created the greatest need for recovery assistance.

In 2019, Don had plenty of work to do close to home.  On May 22nd, Jefferson City was hit by a tornado producing peak winds of 160 mph, which traveled 32 miles through central Missouri. In Jefferson City alone, the storm damaged 516 residential structures and 80 government buildings, in addition to 82 commercial buildings. There were no deaths, but 33 people suffered injuries, and insurance claims rose to $170 million.

The night the storm hit, Don and his wife, Mary Ellen, began to watch multiple television reports on the worsening weather.

“At midnight I realized the severity of what was happening and told my wife I was going into the Red Cross headquarters,” Don recalled, adding that three other stalwart volunteers showed up there about the same time and began assessing what they could do.  A Red Cross shelter was quickly established at Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

Don began calling in Red Cross shelter volunteers, and the foursome hooked up the shelter trailer and headed to the school to set up cots and other supplies. Then Don moved on to a disaster response office set up at the First United Methodist Church.  There he was assigned to take a newly hired staff person with him to conduct damage assessment.

“It was shocking,” he recalled.  “I was so upset about the scale of what I saw I just kept working for two full days completing disaster assessments on 125 residential sites.  At one point, I was exhausted—shaking and possibly dehydrated.   But somehow, I felt I could not stop because this was my town now. People I knew from all the years I had lived here were affected. It was incredibly sad, but we made a difference in their lives. We helped them at a time when they really needed help most."

By Susan Gallagher

It was the sirens that got her attention, though all was calm in her part of town.

American Red Cross volunteer Pam Protzman and her husband Dirk woke to an emergency signal bleeping from their television. A veteran fire fighter, Dirk turned on a scanner and heard the call for all firemen to report to duty. He left for duty, and Pam headed for the Jefferson City and the Red Cross Central and Northern Missouri Chapter headquarters.

There on that night in May 2019, she learned that an EF-3 tornado had hit Jefferson City. This “wedge” tornado — wider in its funnel than it was tall — moved at 40 miles an hour, shooting debris 13,000 feet into the air. It ripped the roofs off several businesses, blew out windows, and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes. In the next few days, the Red Cross provided more than 1,000 overnight shelter stays, over nine thousand meals and hundreds of personal care kits and other emergency supplies.

That night, Pam joined a group of three other dedicated volunteers to begin the work of providing shelter, offering resources and assessing damages.   The retired nurse of many years, mother of three and grandmother of three quickly enlisted her son to tow a Red Cross tailer filled with shelter supplies to the Thomas Jefferson Middle School shelter site. Then she swung into action finding out what resources were available for survivors. 

Pam was soon called to the city’s Emergency Operation Center, where she served survivors for 36 hours straight in the first days of disaster.

“We believe that the Red Cross must deliver the help survivors need when they are at the lowest point of their lives,” said this veteran of 16 years as a Red Cross volunteer. ““That is what the Red Cross is all about.”

Aiding others has been Pam’s guiding force almost all of her adult life. She started working at a nursing home at age 16 and then, after completing nursing school, served for 15 years in nursing homes. Later she worked for more than 14 years in the office of a family physician and then launched her own business providing private care in homes.

At the Red Cross, Pam has volunteered in disaster response services, helping dozens of fire victims. She has installed smoke alarms, offered safety education to children and taught first aid classes, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Pam has also been a Red Cross ambassador, meeting with officials and organizations in many of the 27 central Missouri counties her chapter covers.

She comes from generations of committed community leaders who lived in the northern Missouri town of Greentop, population 351 and 40 minutes from the Iowa state line. Pam and her family moved to Jefferson City in the 1980s for work, and since then, between her long nursing career and her volunteer work, she rarely goes anywhere without being recognized.  

“I was shopping the other day when a young woman called out to me telling me she was homeless again,” Pam recalled. “The tornado had destroyed her house so she moved to an apartment, where a fire broke out. Now she needs a place to live. In the middle of Walmart, I counseled her on what to do to find another place to live.”