Family living in hotel after house passed down for generations destroyed in May 16 tornado

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Veronica Walton’s new normal since May 16 includes living from hotel to hotel.

She rode out the tornado with her mom in their north St. Louis home.

Walton tells First Alert 4, “I just had to grab my mom and push her into the closet and jump in with her and just hold the door knob while everything around me shook apart.”

She says the home on Greer Avenue is a total loss and was a fixture in their family for five generations.

“We’re in a four family flat that was actually purchased by my great grandfather who was a World War I soldier,” says Walton.

Clinging to what they could grab, Walton and her elderly parent began the process of staying in hotels.

“So far we’ve racked up nearly $5,000 in hotel expenses out of our own pockets,” she says.

Michael McMillan, President and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis tells First Alert 4, “This tragedy has put thousands of people in need of trying to figure out where to live, so we currently have 350 individuals that we have placed in hotels whose homes have been deemed uninhabitable by the city.”

The Urban League is providing a free hotel stay for Walton’s family and hundreds of others for up to a month.

Walton says, “Just knowing that we weren’t going to go into major debt, just trying to afford a place to live and now that we’re here, we can settle down. You know, it relieves the stress. My parents were, you know, very kind of broken, you know, losing their home after so much time.”

The Urban League’s resources can be found here. People who need temporary housing can call the Urban League at 314-615-3600.

A GoFundMe has been created for the Walton family.