The people of Joplin have learned to pay attention to the weather forecast. In reality, they represent the resurrection of one of the older parts of Joplin, where homes built in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s were ground to pieces by one of the most violent tornadoes in American history. Thousands of recently built homes with sapling trees in the landscaping and new cars on the driveway give the appearance of a newly developed subdivision. Today, the Joplin tornado zone looks fresh and modern. They then performed an epic evacuation of patients from the hospital’s upper floors, carrying them down pitch-black stairwells to waiting ambulances. John’s staff performed heroically, treating a rush of patients who showed up by ambulance, car, pick-up truck, or who just walked in. A gas main on one end of the building and an oxygen storage cylinder on the other end were both leaking, and had their contents combined, the resulting explosion would have been horrific. An air conditioning unit on the building’s roof was lifted off and dropped onto the ground where it disabled the hospital’s back-up generators, plunging the badly damaged building into darkness. John’s Regional Medical Center, but it dealt a horrific blow. Had the tornado’s path been a mere half-mile south, it would have taken out both Joplin hospitals.
#JOPLIN TORNADO PATH DRIVERS#
Because the twister was large and rain-wrapped, it was difficult to know which way to turn, and some drivers made a fatal mistake. The majority of victims died due to what the coroner designated as “multiple blunt force trauma.”Ī few fatalities were recorded in automobiles, several of which apparently drove into the tornado’s path.
In the majority of tornadoes, this may have been sufficient, but in the EF-4 and EF-5 damage zones, interior rooms and hallways offered less than ideal protection. Because there are very few basements in Joplin, this means interior baths and closets, or hallways. Most fatalities in Joplin occurred indoors, and there are indications many victims were in the best position available to them. During that interminable time, your home is wracked by hurricane-force winds from different directions, loaded with debris large and small, battering even a well-built home to pieces. Moving at 25 mph, a tornado of this size takes almost two minutes to pass over your house. It was easy to mistake the cloud for heavy rain, but a jet-like roar was a clue to many that the rain was obscuring an enormous funnel.Īfter touchdown, the twister rapidly attained EF-5 power, ¾ of a mile in width. Still, when folks stepped outside to verify the tornado, they couldn’t see a tornado funnel, just a very black sky coming closer to town.
Some in town may have been confused by the on-again, off-again outdoor sirens, but they understood something important was happening. The city’s outdoor tornado sirens went on at 5:11, but tornado sirens can only run for three minutes before they must cycle off to cool down. NOAA Weather Radios in the area received two tornado warnings as the western sky grew ominously black. The NWS then issued a second tornado warning eight minutes later, at 5:17, for what would become the Joplin tornado. The National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri had issued a tornado warning at 5:09 for a storm on the northern edge of Joplin. In all, about 30% of the city was wrecked. 7,500 homes were damaged, 4,000 of them totally destroyed. A bizarre collision of thunderstorms added incredible energy into the air and the resulting twister spent the next 17 minutes tracking due east across the southern third of Joplin. went from a tiny rope-like funnel to a massive “wedge” in less than 30 seconds. The tornado that dropped down on the west edge of Joplin at 5:36 P.M. Why? Because if you are caught in a violent tornado, only a designated storm shelter or basement will offer you the protection you need to survive. Although these “worst case” tornadoes are rare (some years we don’t have a single EF-5), they are responsible for the most deaths. Although the Fujita tornado intensity scale did not exist in the 1950’s, we know from damage reports the Flint tornado was, like Joplin, an EF-5 tornado, with winds of more than 200 mph. Prior to Joplin, the last tornado to kill more than 100 people occurred in Flint, Michigan in 1953. It took $3 billion to repair and replace everything the twister destroyed. Besides being the deadliest tornado of the past fifty years, it was also the costliest tornado in U.S. Saturday, marks the 10 year anniversary of the Joplin, Missouri EF-5 tornado.
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