JOPLIN, Missouri – A Wichita school nurse in Joplin when the tornado hit Sunday captures a look inside St. John's Regional Medical Center, the main hospital in the city.
Sandy Elliott was in Joplin this past weekend to help care for her ailing father. She took pictures of St. John’s Regional Medical Center from the outside and inside. She says every window was blown out and ceiling tiles and debris littered the hallways.
“The amount of devastation, I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Elliott. “I’ll never be the same after seeing that much destruction.”
Elliott’s father was in the intensive care unit on the seventh floor, when the twister took direct aim at the hospital.
“He had just been taken off a ventilator a couple hours before the tornado hit, so it's real touch and go with him,” said Elliott.
Her father suffered only a few cuts, but she says others weren't so lucky.
“There were people bleeding. Someone with his arm kind of hanging. People were just bewildered. A lot of people were just covered in blood,” recalled Elliott.
As a nurse, she wanted to help so Elliott set up a makeshift triage room on the first floor.
“Here were these people that had just had surgery the day before and they were wrapped up in a wet blanket and that's all they had,” said Elliott. “I was just trying to get people the most immediate life needs that they needed.”
Elliott and her family were able to drive her father to a Pittsburg, Kansas hospital where he continues to recover.
Elliott now says she knows first-hand how critically important tornado drills are and she plans to pass that on to her students at Hadley Middle School when she returns to Wichita.
