In the storm's aftermath, it appeared as if “livelihoods were stacked into heaps of brick, wood and glass,” Camoriano says.

Meanwhile, American Family Insurance expects to make payments totaling $116 million on some 2,400 claims in Joplin. The insurer sponsored an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” to help the community rebuild, says spokesman Ken Muth, who adds that an agent's office in Joplin was demolished. The agent was relocated to another agent's office so he could begin helping customers.

After a disaster of Joplin's scale, “we don't work much from the office anyway,” says Muth. “We're out visiting customers at their homes, or what is left of them. The damage was unbelievable.”

American Family is also sponsoring several events, including a memorial run for the 161 lives lost in the tornado, to mark the one-year anniversary.

Jerry Davies, spokesman for Farmers Insurance, says the event “was beyond belief in the ferocity and velocity of the tornado.”

The insurer set up a mobile claims truck at a local Wal-Mart and one of its agents got Tyson Foods and another distributor to deliver meat and vegetables.

“They set up a cooking area using the agent's home grills and the agents and volunteers fed 115,000 people that first weekend, working 16 hours per day,” Davies says.

Camoriano says the image of a child's teddy bear next to an open Bible changed his perception of natural disasters.

“It became an individual event for me, where before it was easy to get caught up in talking simply about X number of claims,” he adds. It made me ask some tough questions. Did the children make it out of this house alive? What would it be like to lose everything in a matter of seconds?”