It was a small spot of good-natured humor in the wake of such devastation.

We've been ravaged here in St. Louis as well. The Good Friday tornado, which miraculously, no one died from, leveled whole neighborhoods here in St. Louis, and our Lambert Airport took a direct hit. Most of the windows and doors were shattered, and Concourse C was all but destroyed. One plane full of passengers was lifted off the ground and set back down, and another was shoved several feet away from the gate.

A Ferguson church that I used to play piano in for the daycare center was stripped of it's roof, and a number of people watching a movie inside that night, barely made it to the basement before the building was hit. The church is beyond saving and will be razed to the ground. Currently, it sits there still open to the sky, the pointed wooden support beamslooking almost like a bleached skeleton, as a stark reminder to the devastation that day.

2 other friends of mine were in church that night. One friend was in the church in Maryland Heights that had the steeple blown off, and the other was in a church in Bridgeton that was barely missed by the deadly path.

My parents house, near Dellwood was also barely missed. We were safe, but it was an extremely powerful and scary storm, and althrough we didn't get directly hit, there were trees and power lines down everywhere. And many of my friends and family were lucky to be just barely out of the path of this monstrous storm.

The tornado that hit us was an F4 and Joplin's was an F5 multi-vortex tornado, something we haven't seen in years in the area, the news said. Joplin was truly heartbreaking, huge parts of it were just completely levelled, and over 150 people lost their lives.

Dellwood, Ferguson, Berkley and Bridgeton were hit hard, as was Maryland Heights and New Melle further west towards St. Charles. This tornado hit us where we live. I have to drive through tornado ravaged neighborhoods every week, and it's hard to see sometimes.

The pictures don't bring the true impact. It's the driving past the devastated houses and neighborhoods and ruined buildings that do. It's the line of trees along Royal Avenue whose treetops are simply gone, just chopped off at the top. There are just no words to really describe it...the only one that comes to mind for me is haunting.

It's truly a miracle that no one died here in the St. Louis area.

Brenda