In the photo below, a truck's back end was essentially shredded and what was left of it wrapped around a debarked tree. John's Regional Medical Center, a damaged car landed on top of a building adjacent to the hospital. It's the photos of deformed cars and trucks that I'll never forget. Vehicles Unrecognizable, Tossed or Never Found Gagan said it was the first, and hopefully only, EF5-rated tornado damage he'll see in person. This prompted the NWS to rate the Joplin tornado an EF5, despite an engineering study released two years later that failed to find any EF5 damage. Manhole covers were lifted from a street and large steel support beams were curved, twisted or otherwise distorted. "The western half to two-thirds of the track featured defoliated and debarked trees, scouring, parking blocks scraped from the ground with the rebar and deposited well away from parking lots, a lot of debris loading as it progressed," he said. The ferocity of the damage also sticks with Gagan. In this July 21, 2011, file photo, a worker walks among a pile of debris at a landfill in Galena, Kansas, where some of the tornado debris have been hauled from nearby Joplin, Missouri. The hospital was smoking – smoking!" Baker said.
"As we got closer to the hospital, the situation dramatically changed. John's Regional Medical Center immediately after the tornado. Jessica Baker, a content manager at the time, also arrived at St. All I could do was tell him to keep walking toward an area where some doctors and nurses had gathered." He had a very large gash and was in need of immediate medical attention. "A man walked up to me, soaking wet and dirty from head to toe. We watched as victim after victim was pulled from the debris, each with a grieving family member," Bettes wrote in a 2012 piece for .īettes said there was one image that remains in his memory. "We watched as firefighters used nothing more than their bare hands to rescue people trapped under the weight of their own homes. Homes are no match for a violent tornado," he said. "Warnings aren't enough when it comes to violent tornadoes. "Merely seeking shelter in the lowest, innermost portion of a home adds a measure of safety, but does not guarantee survival," Greg Forbes, former severe weather expert at The Weather Channel, told in an email.įorbes said Joplin illustrates the need for underground and specially designed in-home tornado shelters. NIST also found that 82% of Joplin homes lacked basements, but that no deaths occurred in damaged homes where people sought shelter in basements. It was the deadliest tornado since 1947, which was before tornado warnings were routinely issued.Ī report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that 87% of the fatalities occurred inside a building. according to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. Officially, 158 deaths were directly attributed to the tornado, the seventh-deadliest single tornado in the U.S. Less than a month later, Joplin shattered the notion that modern technology could guard against a prolific death toll from a single tornado. Then came the April 2011 Super Outbreak, when some 350 tornadoes killed over 300 people in the South. It seemed improbable in the era of Doppler radar, the internet, spotter networks, watches and warnings and news media that a single tornado could claim over 100 lives in the U.S. Power flashes occurred as the storm damaged electrical lines and equipment. KSNF-TV's tower camera captured the wedge tornado as it moved into Joplin. You might think a large, violent tornado would have an obvious, ominous appearance, like the May 1999 Moore-Oklahoma City or the April 27, 2011, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, tornadoes. Here are some reflections from meteorologists of that tragic evening. One of the nation's worst single tornadoes lingers in the memory of meteorologists who covered it, from those who arrived at the scene to those who warned the public of the danger. The city will commemorate the anniversary with an observance Saturday, including a tolling of bells and a minute of silence at the exact minute the tornado entered the city. One hundred fifty-eight people lost their lives directly due to the EF5 tornado on May 22, 2011. Saturday marks the 10-year anniversary of the Joplin tornado, which tore a six-mile-long and up to a mile-wide path of devastation through the southwest Missouri city.
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