The Destruction and Reconstruction of Home
Reflecting on the odd experience of witnessing the destruction of "home" in real time.
On Wednesday, at around 11 pm, I found out that the town I grew up in had been leveled by a freak tornado.
I’m well aware that it’s a cliche for bystanders to state that people think that they’re invincible until tragedy strikes their home. Even so, I really wasn’t expecting this. On average, my former home state of New Jersey experiences two tornadoes per year according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When a tornado does actually manage to touch the ground, it rarely accomplishes much beyond taking down a few pine trees or some vinyl fencing.
Furthermore, I can tell you with utmost confidence that nothing ever happens in Mullica Hill, the town my parents moved us to sometime during the autumn of 1996. When strangers ask where I am from, it is easier for me to just say “Philadelphia” because I know that no one has ever heard of Mullica Hill.
Something possessed me to check my mostly inactive Facebook Wednesday evening, while I sat comfortably in an armchair about 300 miles away from the carnage. What I found were dozens of reposts of houses reduced to rubble, security camera footage recording trees unearthed like the weeds I pull out of my strawberry patch with a quick yank. Local businesses recommended as “something I might like” offered free meals to townspeople and were already in the midsts of organizing donation drives for suddenly homeless families. I came across a man named John, offering to tear through obstacles and debris with his chainsaw.
Even after devastating Louisiana, the remnants of Hurricane Ida roared through the northeastern United States. Although this manifested as little more than heavy rains in my current corner of New England, fate’s roulette wheel mandated that 150mph winds do their worst to Mullica Hill for a 20-minute window.
Though I left town years ago, it is still the place that my parents, brother, grandmother, and two separate uncles call home. As you might expect, my immediate reaction was to try to find out if they were alright (they are). Being relatively late at night, I predictably couldn’t get ahold of them. So, out of desperation(? Morbid curiosity? Perhaps a mix of both), I resorted to the tools that I had available. Through context clues and shared articles and Google Maps, I was able to surmise that the majority of the damage occurred near the Shop Rite that I’d often shy away from for fear of having to strike up small talk with some person I once knew.
Once I stopped tossing around worst-case scenarios internally, I couldn’t help but reflect on the peculiarity of my position as a bystander. Vicariously experiencing the devastation of a place I knew so intimately, I’ve struggled over the last few days to stop looking through the one-way glass of my cold and callous Macbook.