Joplin (KSDK)--The powerful tornado that hit Joplin on May 22, 2011 scattered memories across four states.

A dedicated group of volunteers has spent the past year collecting and restoring more than 32,000 photographs lost in the storm.

Members of the First Baptist Church of Carthage sort through box after box of wet, dirty photographs, tattered, torn and taken from their rightful owners by mother nature's fury.

It's a tedious, time-consuming process. They carefully clean and catalogue each one. The pictures are then scanned and placed on-line waiting to be claimed.

The goal is to restore hope to those who thought they lost everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KSDK