GRANBY AND NEWTONIA — Jonathan Brown and his wife, Katie, were looking at their mobile home Sunday afternoon.

Or what’s left of their home.

“We found most of our cats, but we’re looking for the kittens,” said Jonathan, who resides at 1613 S. Main Street in Granby. “We lost pretty much what we had. We are just trying to salvage what we can, and basically start over. There is not a lot that we can do. Mother Nature is going to do what she wants to do.”

The family was not in the home at the time of the tornado, but heard the sirens in Granby go off.

“We tried to get away from it. We were traveling northwest,” said Jonathon. “I have been doing a lot of work on the trailer. I hate to see it end up like it is.”
Looking at one side of the trailer, a toilet was seen, while on the other side, there was the bathtub.

“(The tornado) rearranged everything,” Brown said. “One thing that is unique is that part is the roof and somehow it got twisted around and it is setting around the bottom of the house.”

Across the street from the Browns is the Granby Memorial Cemetery, where people with chainsaws were working Sunday.

“We are there helping cut downed trees and stacking the brush,” said Sid Davis, a volunteer.

Davis and a handful of volunteers from Messenger College and Joplin Church of Life were working Sunday to clean up the area the day after Saturday’s storm.

“We started on Highway 43 and were told (Granby) needed help, so here we are.”

In Newtonia
“Mother Nature had called and I went to the bathroom with my two dogs,” said Virginia Habecker, 679 Mill Street. “I put the rug over our heads and a towel. Then it got so bright, I thought that the lights came on, and then it dawned on me, ‘no, my house is gone.’ Thank God for the call of Mother Nature. I am dead serious. I would have been gone.”
Habecker was sifting through debris of her home, where she lived for five years, trying to find belongings.