2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- Ice Cream Designers

We had a slower day for the most part today so I want to take this chance to give you an idea of our play center. Patty took these pictures early one morning before opening time. 

Most of our supplies come from large suit cases CDS calls "Kits of Comfort":

In these suit cases are toys geared toward providing child-lead play opportunities and include emergency vehicle toys, doctor-kits, blocks, construction toys, etc. 

From these, and whatever else we can find, we set up our play area. During the Joplin tornado last year, the company Creative Playthings decided they want to start helping CDS out at each disaster and they donated a tun of things for our play space here in Oklahoma. The colorful gate/wall in the pictures is from them as we'll as some shelving and toys. My teammates say they have normally just constructed some sort of walls with whatever they can find on other disaster trips (cardboard boxes, chairs, tables on their sides,etc). So this is luxury!

We can't travel with the things from Creative Playthings so there is already a plan of where we will be donating them here in the community when we leave.  And from what I understand Creative Playthings is planning on continuing to donate to CDS during each disaster. Pretty cool!

A couple days ago we also constructed a basketball area which has been a huge hit. See the hoop??

For all you child life specialists, we have been doing a lot of child-directed medical play. Here is a medical team working hard to get a "tiger" out of Kathy's ear. Good thing this little girl is wearing her medical glasses!

And on a side note....I'm realizing there's one constant life-stressor for me that has been nonexistent on this trip and I'm loving it!!  It's not having to plan or cook my own food!  The Red Cross takes care of our breakfasts and dinners and the Salvation Army makes all our lunches in the center every day. It's simply heaven for me. My teammate Kathy and I have become (as she describes it) ice cream designers. We get really into a very calculated plan for our deserts each night- how much and when to add hot fudge, etc.  I can't describe to you the joy this brings me!! 

(BTW Ignore the fruit in the background...this moment's all about ice cream toppings.) The food service people know us well by now and I'm not sure I want to leave this!!

2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- TP Retaliation

I feel like I'm kind of over-it with all the devistation around us. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's all still here and I don't like it!  And why is it that it seemed worse than ever this morning?!  Everything just looked so terrible. My new team-mate Kathy who has lots of experience with other disasters said it might just be because today was such gloomy weather.  It just seemed like the buildings and cars were extra aweful today. 

I feel guilty that part of me just wants to get away from seeing it all. Of course lots of the people who live here don't have that option.  This must be the start of the "survivor's guilt" that Pearl and Patty have talked about feeling after returning home from different trips.

But Patty sent me a picture text of Pearl's TP retaliation on Patty's door this morning which made me laugh out loud. She made it so pretty!! 

 --and with that, the day began looking better than our gloomy morning.  Leave it to awesome team-mates to get you back up and ready to play!

It was a quieter day over-all today with the kids, with only a few moments of kid-chaos. 

One older boy in the center just seemed like he needed/wanted to talk and he described his experience with the tornado easily as we painted pictures. He and his family stayed safe in a neighbor's storm shelter with a lot of other neighbors. He talked about what it was like to come out of the shelter after the storm and see his whole neighborhood destroyed. He talked about specific things that were damaged or destroyed and what wasn't damaged at all. He also talked about how much he loves his new, super comfortable bed in their new house (temporary house while they make plans to re-build). I found out later that mom was concerned about him because he wasn't talking about it. 

During one of the moments of chaos this morning, I brought in a few extra card-board boxes and it created almost immediate calm. 

Here's Jane peeking inside one. The most rowdy kids at that moment all climbed in these boxes (even tho some boxes were pretty small) and they were content and even quiet for a time. Still so amazing to me what effect these boxes have for the kids!

There are so many great stories from today. I just have to say again that this team I'm working with is amazing. I feel so honored to be apart of it and so grateful for all I'm learning through them. 

Thanks team!

2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- Sigh!

Week one is completed and I'm exhausted!  What's the best way to end week one? Getting moved to a hotel with our own rooms and bathrooms!! It's amazing how good that feels!

Patty and I TP'd Pearl's door and now it's time to crash. 

More kid stories another night. :)

2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- Missing Photos

This morning I was able to take some time and go to Oklahoma City Children's Hospital and meet with the Child Life Manager, Erin. She gave me a really good idea of the tornado disaster from inside the hospital and how their child life department handled it.  It was an exciting conversation as we brainstormed  ideas for better solutions, etc.

They have an incredible play area in their hospital. I had to get a picture!:

From there, I ran to the Oklahoma City bombing memorial before hurrying back to the Center to meet back up with my CDS team. 

You can see the individual chairs for each person who died on the left of this picture. And below is a fence with many of the items left to honor the victims:

I kept hearing how amazing that memorial is and I'm definitely glad I got to go see it even for short visit.  

Once back in the center today, we spent a lot of time with play dough.  My teammate Patty was able to support a child today in a way that was too special to put into words. She saw beyond the anger this child was showing to the heart of her pain and she met her there with the perfect amount of support and love.  It was quite a moment.  

One thing I found interesting:

People are able to drop off pictures they find so that the pictures can hopefully be reunited with their owners. These pictures in this bag were dirty and torn and stained, but they just might be someone's prized memories. I love it that someone has made this a priority and will try to reunite people with these memories.

Two big things I'm looking forward to tomorrow:   1. Our new teammate jumping in (she arrived here tonight) and  2. Doing some laundry!!!

2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- Broken Cracker?

Our team:

Jane, Patty, Myrna, me, and Pearl. (Vivian and John are missing from this picture.) We had another team-mate, Kerri who got pink eye and had to leave us and Myrna was only able to stay until yesterday.

We had about 50 kids today which is what we had last Friday when I first started. Looks for sure like our numbers are not going down!  So, since we are still seeing a large number of kids, we have a new team-mate being rushed in to help. 

When we walked in this morning I overheard a family saying that they had just found out about this disaster center from a neighbor and they had no idea there was a place to come for help. We heard from a cop the other day that the publicity has been insufficient and there are many people who are just finding out about the disaster center this week. It's just amazing how many people still need so much help. 

There were so many great stories from today. The kids are still loving the cardboard boxes and reenacting the tornado and rebuilding.

Here's a roof a kid put on his house:

At one point today, I went over to a brother and sister (sister is 6 and brother is 2). The sister and I had been doing puzzles for a while (re-building and putting pieces back together) and then they were eating a snack. The boy looked at me and randomly said, "broken". I said,"what?" And he repeated it: "broken". I asked him, "what's broken?" Thinking maybe the cracker in his hand was broken, but he didn't respond. His sister waited a minute and then said that her brother was talking about their house because "our house broke in the tornado". She went on to tell me more details and said she wasn't at home when it happened because she was at Plaza Towers school (the one destroyed) hiding in the bathroom. We talked for a little while about it and then spent more time playing. There were quite a few kids today that seemed to be really needing this play opportunity today.  Many of them were very serious during their play. It was a day proving the definition of play:: the work of children. 

But before I go, you need to know that today is Pearl's 68th birthday!  I suggested we go swinging to celebrate before we left this morning. Patty and Pearl introduced me to swinging songs! Who knew!!  And Pearl said, "that was just marvelous!" when we left. 

2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- Dragon's Teeth!

I really wanted to go see the hospital that was hit by the tornado. So, here it is:

It's just hard to imagine all the staff and patients who were in there and what it was like for them. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt.

This was next door to the hospital. Can you figure out what it was?

We had almost 15 more kids today than we did yesterday. So maybe things aren't slowing down quite yet! I'm not sure!  

It was another great day full of mostly construction, rebuilding, and demolishing-type play.

Here's a picture though of a child's drawing. Do you know what it is?  

I sure didn't until he told me. The yellow is a dragon and the blue is his teeth. The green and brown all around is the "hurricane".

One more picture...

They've been giving these boxes out to families each day as they leave the center. Some families leave with several, and I found out today that they're food boxes- MRE's. Pretty interesting! I kind of want to see what they're like!

And speaking of food, I have to tell you all that I ate 4 fruit roll-ups today while walking to the parking lot after finishing our busy day. :) 

2013 Oklahoma Tornadoes- by Katie Nees-- Serious Construction with a Plastic Hammer

First, I want to give you a better idea of where we're working. 

This high school has become the main hub for all things-disaster. Besides the Red Cross and FEMA, there's every other imaginable disaster service and some insurance companies here too. Anyone in the area who has suffered any type of loss/damage from the tornadoes and the flooding is directed to come here. They have had anywhere from 400-500 people a day and it often takes hours if not several days for the families to get things figured out with all the available services. 

Often, Children's Disaster Services sets up inside shelters to provide child-centered play for kids living there. But it sounds like they had few children at shelters during this disaster for various reasons. Every disaster is completely different.   

So, CDS has been here in the high school since the first few days. The first CDS team finished their two weeks and my team has taken over.  We had more kids than we could handle and a waiting list the first few days and now we've been seeing a steady decline in the numbers of kids coming (which is a good thing of course!). But right now we still have plenty of kids and of course quality is always more important than quantity!

On to the fun stuff...

The kids were very verbal today during their expressive play, describing their experiences with the tornado and their feelings and fears. They lead the play, as usual, and it ended up being a day full of demolition and lots of re-building. This little girl was building "my house" as she put it. She worked on it very intently and seriously and when she was done she wanted me to take a picture of it all done:

See, now it has a completed roof!  This same type of play continued throughout the day spontaneously with several children.

We also found some more huge cardboard boxes in the afternoon and each kid who wanted could "build" their own house out of the box. (I'm not sure who had more fun with this, me or the kids!). 

Here I am trying to get in (wish I was smaller!) while a boy is still perfecting the window:

Then, they played out the tornado scene on their own initiative and this is what was left:

I have to smile because I know how healthy this play and processing is for them.

I'm looking forward to what we end up doing tomorrow!! 

Loving every minute. 

**Thanks goes to Patty Henry for taking and sharing some of her pictures!