The Chiefs wrapped up their minicamp on Thursday, but they had one more team activity before scattering to the four winds until training camp.
A contingent from the team bussed down to Joplin, Missouri on Friday to help build houses for residents of the community still in need of housing more than a year after a tornado destroyed large swaths of the town. The Chiefs were active in fund-raising and relief efforts last year and have continued to come up with ways to help Joplin, including hosting a Joplin High School football game at Arrowhead Stadium.
The Chiefs have joined with the Rams, Royals and Cardinals (the baseball variety) in the 2012 Governor’s Joplin-Habitat Challenge, which Missouri Governor Jay Nixon started to build 35 houses in a devastated area. The Chiefs’ website has a slideshow of phots from the visit, one of which is on this page courtesy of photographer Steve Sanders and the Chiefs, and General Manager Scott Pioli did an interview with Sirius XM NFL Radio, via Arrowhead Pride, from Joplin.
“Visually it looks like there’s progress being made, and I had a chance to talk to the families,” Pioli continued. “Since the tornado they’ve been living in a FEMA mobile-homes since then. We’re just putting the foundation down, we put up the frame of the house and the roof and the walls, so as much as certain parts [look done]...it was such a disaster before. Once the clean-up is done, it looks better. Once new buildings go up, it looks better. But our work won’t be done here for years and years.”
It’s laudable to see that the Chiefs and Rams have remained part of the effort to rebuild Joplin and we wish them all the success in the world in the endeavor.