2011 Joplin tornado

A timeline and track map of the tornado

The tornado first touched down in Newton County, Missouri, just east of the Missouri–Kansas state line, approximately one-half mile (0.80 km) southwest of the intersection of South Central City Road and 32nd Street, at 5:34 p.m. CDT (22:34 UTC). Eyewitnesses and storm chasers reported multiple vortices rotating around the parent circulation. Here, the tornado downed several large trees at EF0 intensity.[20] Civil defense sirens sounded in Joplin twenty minutes before the tornado struck, in response to the tornado warning issued at 5:17 p.m. CDT (22:17 UTC) for northwestern Newton and southwestern Jasper counties in Missouri, and southeastern portions of Cherokee County, Kansas, but many Joplin residents did not heed the warning or the sirens.[21][22]

The tornado moved east-northeast and strengthened to EF1 intensity as it continued through rural areas towards Joplin, snapping trees and power poles and damaging outbuildings. Widening, the tornado then tracked into the more densely populated southwest corner of the city near the Twin Hills Country Club. It heavily damaged several homes at a subdivision in this area at up to EF3 strength. The tornado continued to cause EF3 damage as it moved through another subdivision just east of Iron Gates Road.[23] Numerous homes were destroyed and multiple vehicles tossed around, some of which were thrown onto or rolled into homes. The tornado reached EF4 intensity just before crossing S. Schifferdecker Ave.[20]

A destroyed area in the tornado's damage path on May 23.

The now massive and wedge-shaped tornado then crossed S. Schifferdecker Ave. at 5:38 p.m. CDT (22:38 UTC),[16]^: 17 producing its first area of EF4 damage only four minutes after touching down, as several small but well-built commercial buildings were flattened. Consistent EF4 to EF5 damage was noted east of S. Schifferdecker Ave. and continued through most of southern Joplin. Numerous homes, businesses, and medical buildings were flattened in this area, with concrete walls collapsed and crushed into the foundations. A large steel-reinforced step and floor structure leading to a completely destroyed medical building was "deflected upward several inches and cracked". Steel trusses from some of the buildings were "rolled up like paper", and deformation or twisting of the main support beams was noted. Multiple vehicles were thrown and mangled or wrapped around trees nearby. Several 300-pound concrete parking stops anchored with rebar were torn from a parking lot in this area and thrown up to 60 yards (55 m) away. Iowa State University wind engineer Partha Sarkar calculated the force needed to remove the parking stops from the lot and found that winds exceeding 200 mph (320 km/h) would have been required.[24]

St. John's Regional Medical Center sustained EF5 damage and had to be torn down due to deformation of its foundation and underpinning system.

Damage became remarkably widespread and catastrophic at and around the nearby St. John's Regional Medical Center, which lost nearly every window on three sides, interior walls, ceilings, and part of its roof; its life flight helicopter was also blown away and destroyed.[20] Loss of backup power caused five fatalities,[25] and the nine-story building was so damaged that it was deemed structurally compromised, and later torn down. According to the NWS office in Springfield, Missouri, such extreme structural damage to such a large and well-built structure likely indicated winds at or exceeding 200 mph (320 km/h).[20] Vehicles in the hospital parking lot were thrown into the air and mangled beyond recognition, including a semi-truck that was tossed 125 yards (114 m) and wrapped completely around a debarked tree.[26] Small debris from the hospital, including X-rays, medical reports, and dental records, was found in Greene and Polk counties many miles to the east.[27] Wind-rowing of debris was noted in this area, and more concrete parking stops were removed from the St. John's parking lot. Virtually every house near McClelland Boulevard and 26th Street was flattened; some were swept completely away, and trees sustained severe debarking.[20][28]

Aerial view of the St. John's Regional Medical Center campus

As the tornado tracked eastward, it maintained EF5 strength as it crossed Main Street (Route 43) between 20th and 26th Streets. It heavily damaged every business along that stretch and virtually destroyed several institutional buildings. It tracked just south of downtown, narrowly missing it. Entire neighborhoods were leveled in this area with some more homes swept away, and trees were stripped completely of their bark. At some residences, reinforced concrete porches were deformed or, in some cases, completely torn away. Damage to driveways was noted at some residences as well. Numerous vehicles were tossed up to several blocks, and a few homeowners never located their vehicles.[20] A large church, a nursing home, Franklin Technology Center, St. Mary's Catholic Church and School, and Joplin High School were all destroyed along this corridor. The Greenbriar Nursing Home was completely leveled, with 21 fatalities occurring there alone.[28] No one was in the high school at the time, as the graduation ceremonies held about three miles (4.8 km) to the north at Missouri Southern State University had concluded shortly before the storm. Pieces of cardboard were found embedded in stucco walls that remained standing at Joplin High School. Steel beams and pieces of fencing were deeply embedded into the ground in fields near the high school, steel fence posts were bent to the ground in opposite directions, and a school bus was thrown into a nearby bus garage. As the tornado crossed Connecticut Avenue further to the east, it destroyed several large apartment buildings, a Dillons grocery store, and a bank. Only the concrete safety deposit box vault remained at the bank,[26] and a wooden 2x4 was found speared completely through a concrete curb at one location. The tornado then approached Rangeline Road, the main commercial strip in the eastern part of Joplin, affecting additional neighborhoods along 20th Street.[20]

A safety deposit box vault seen after the tornado, having remained intact despite the destruction of the bank building that housed it.

The now heavily rain-wrapped tornado continued at EF5 intensity as it crossed Range Line Road. In that corridor between about 13th and 32nd Streets, the tornado continued producing catastrophic damage as it reached its widest point nearly one mile (1.6 km) across. As the tornado struck a Pizza Hut on South Range Line Road, store manager Christopher Lucas herded four employees and 15 customers into a walk-in freezer. With difficulty closing the door, he wrapped a bungee cord holding the door shut around his arm until he was sucked out and killed by the tornado.[29][30] The tornado completely destroyed a Walmart supercenter, a Home Depot, and numerous other businesses and restaurants in this area, many of which were flattened. Numerous metal roof trusses were torn from the Home Depot building and were found broken and mangled in nearby fields. Cars that originated at the Home Depot parking lot were found hundreds of yards away. Asphalt was scoured from parking lots at Walmart and a nearby pizza restaurant, and large tractor-trailers were thrown up to 200 yards (180 m) away. An Academy Sports + Outdoors store along Range Line sustained major structural damage, and a chair was found impaled legs-first through an exterior stucco wall there. A nearby three-story apartment complex was also devastated, and two cell phone towers collapsed. In this area, numerous cars were thrown and piled on top of each other, 100-pound (45 kg) manhole covers were removed from roads and thrown, the ground scoured, and a Pepsi distribution plant was completely leveled. Additional calculations with regards to the manhole covers by Partha Sarkar revealed that winds had to have exceeded 200 miles per hour (320 km/h) for the manhole covers to be removed.[24][28] Many fatalities occurred in this area, and the damage was rated as EF5.[20][31]

A radar image of the supercell that produced the tornado shows both a distinctive "hook echo" (left) and an impressive velocity signature (right).

Extreme damage continued in the area of Duquesne Road in southeast Joplin. Many houses and industrial and commercial buildings were flattened in this area as well. The industrial park near the corner of 20th and Duquesne was especially hard hit with nearly every building flattened. Several large metal warehouse structures were swept cleanly from their foundations, and several heavy industrial vehicles were thrown up to 400 yards (370 m) away in this area. One of the many warehouses affected was a Cummins warehouse, a concrete block and steel building that was destroyed. The last area of EF5 damage occurred in the industrial park, and a nearby Fastrip gas station and convenience store was completely destroyed. Many homes were destroyed further to the east at EF3 to EF4 strength in a nearby subdivision, and East Middle School sustained major damage.[20][28]

The tornado then continued on an east to east-southeast trajectory towards I-44 where it weakened; nonetheless, vehicles were blown off the highway and mangled near US 71 (exit 11) on what is now the I-49 interchange. The damage at and around the interchange was rated EF2 to EF3. The weakening tornado continued to track into the rural areas of southeastern Jasper County and northeastern Newton County where damage was generally minor to moderate, with trees, mobile homes, outbuildings, and frame homes damaged mainly at EF0 to EF1 strength. The tornado lifted east of Diamond at 6:20 p.m. CDT (23:20 UTC), according to aerial surveys. The total track length was 21.62 miles (34.79 km) long, and the tornado was up to one mile (1.6 km) across at its widest point. A total of 158 people were killed, and over 1,150 others were injured along the path.[20] A separate EF2 tornado touched down near Wentworth from the same supercell about 25 miles (40 km) east-southeast of Joplin, beginning roughly 10 minutes before the dissipation of this tornado.[20]

The tornado also severely damaged critical infrastructure in the city, hampering emergency response and recovery efforts.[37][38] Approximately 4,000 electricity distribution poles were damaged, more than 110 miles (180 km) of distribution line brought down, 135 transmission towers "affected," and an electrical substation in the path of the tornado was completely destroyed (two more were damaged, but reparably so). In the immediate aftermath of the storm, approximately 20,000 people were left without power, and those with homes left intact could not get it restored until 10–12 days later, when their dwellings were approved for safe occupancy. The ultimate cost of rebuilding Joplin's damaged electricity system was calculated at $25.7 million.[35]^{: 222–224}

The tornado also caused about 4,000 leaks in water service lines, dropping Joplin's water system pressure below operating level and necessitating a block-by-block effort to find and repair the service line leaks, with a water boil order issued for the entire city in the meantime. Water pressure was returned to normal outside of the damage area within 48 hours, and the water boil order was lifted after five and a half days.[35]^{: 224–226} Approximately 3,500 gas meters and 55,000 feet (17,000 m) of gas main were damaged, and it took two weeks to stem every gas leak; some damaged mains could not be shut off because they served critical facilities like Freeman Health System, the lone remaining hospital in Joplin.[35]^: 226 In east Joplin, 3,000–5,000 pounds (1,400–2,300 kg) of anhydrous ammonia was released from a valve at a trucking facility and quickly contained; no significant toxic releases occurred.[39][40]

With 21 cell towers down and fiber cables damaged, cellular communications—voice calls in particular, text messages less so—were heavily impeded. Temporary mobile cell towers were deployed by wireless carriers to fill the gap within 24 hours.[35]^: 226 By May 24, three towers owned by AT&T and Sprint had been restored.[39]

An early estimate from catastrophe risk modeling firm Eqecat, Inc. placed the insured losses from the tornado at $1–3 billion USD.[41] By mid-June, more than 19,000 insurance claims had been filed,[42] a number that eventually rose to 61,000, with a total payout of more than $2 billion—31% going to homeowners and 5% to those who lost vehicles.[43] The impact on the insurance industry was not so much due to the number of claims, but the cumulative effect of such a large number of total losses. More than 2,500 local people employed in insurance were involved in some capacity. It was presumed that State Farm would assume the largest share of these losses, having market share of 27% for homeowners insurance and 21% for automobile insurance.[44]

The $2.8 billion in damage is the largest amount for a tornado since 1950.[45]

Extreme damage from the tornado is still clear on June 14, nearly three weeks later, with debarked trees visible in front of destroyed homes.

As of May 2013, the official death toll from NWS was listed at 158 while the City of Joplin listed the death toll at 161 (158 direct). The list was up to 162, until one man's injuries were found to be unrelated to the event.[7][46][47] In one indirect fatality,[47] a policeman was struck by lightning and killed while assisting with recovery and cleanup efforts the day after the storm.[48][49] Another five indirect fatalities occurred after a disease outbreak of mucormycosis infected 13 people, possibly 18 people.[8] Shortly after the tornado, authorities had listed 1,300 people as missing, but the number quickly dwindled as they were accounted for.[50][51][52] Many people were reported to have been trapped in destroyed houses. Seventeen people were rescued from the rubble the day after the tornado struck.[53] Of 146 sets of remains recovered from the rubble, 134 victims had been positively identified by June 1.[51] This total included four sets of partial remains, some of which may have been from a single person.[54][55] On June 2, it was announced that four more victims had died.[56]

Six people were killed when St. John's Regional Medical Center was struck by the tornado. Five of those deaths were patients on ventilators who died after the building lost power and a backup generator did not work.[57] The sixth fatality was a hospital visitor.[58]

The Joplin Globe reported that 54% of the people killed died in their residences, 32% died in non-residential areas and 14% died in vehicles or outdoors. Joplin officials after the tornado announced plans to require hurricane ties or other fasteners between the houses and their foundations (devices add about US$600 to the construction costs). Officials rejected a proposal to require concrete basements in new houses. Officials noted that as of 2009, only 28% of Joplin's new homes had basements, compared with 38% two decades before.[59]

At least 1,150 people were injured severely enough to seek treatment at regional hospitals.[60] Injuries ranged from cuts and bruises to impalement by large debris.[61]

Officials said they rescued 944 pets and reunited 292 with owners.[62]

Joplin, ten days after the tornado

In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers published a study disputing the tornado's initial EF5 rating, based on surveying damage on over 150 structures within a six-mile segment of the storm's path. According to the report, over 83% of the damage was caused by wind speeds of 135 mph (217 km/h) or less, the maximum wind speed of an EF2 tornado. An additional 13% was caused by EF3 wind speeds, and 3% was consistent with EF4 winds. The study found no damage consistent with wind speeds over 200 mph (320 km/h), the minimum threshold of an EF5 tornado.[63] Researchers concluded that the inability to find EF5 damage was due to the absence of construction standards that were able to determine the necessary wind speeds. Bill Colbourne, a member of the engineering team that surveyed the damage, declared that "a relatively large number of buildings could have survived in Joplin if they had been built to sustain hurricane winds."

However, the EF5 rating stood. The NWS office in Springfield stated that their survey teams found only a small area of EF5 structural damage, and that it could have easily been missed in the survey (at and around St. John's Medical Center).[64] Bill Davis, head of Springfield's NWS office, said that the results of the study "do not surprise me at all," adding that "there was only a very small area of EF5 damage in Joplin...we knew right off the bat there was EF4 damage. It took us longer to identify the EF5 damage and that it would take winds of over 200 mph (320 km/h) to do that damage."[65] Additionally, the basis for the EF5 rating in Joplin was mainly contextual rather than structural, with non-conventional damage indicators such as the removal of concrete parking stops, manhole covers, reinforced concrete porches, driveways, and asphalt used to arrive at a final rating. The presence of wind rowed structural debris, instances of very large vehicles such as buses, vans, and semi-trucks being thrown hundreds of yards to several blocks from their points of origin, the fact that some homeowners never located their vehicles, and the overwhelming extent and totality of the destruction in Joplin were also taken into consideration.[20]

According to a detailed damage survey by Timothy Marshall, a majority of houses were destroyed at winds of EF2-3 strength. However he identified 22 well anchored houses which were assigned EF5 ratings.[66]

The Joplin tornado generated an estimated 3 million cubic yards of debris,[69] an amount sufficient to cover a football field 120 stories high.[35]^: 19 Removal efforts lasted for months, and at their height more than 410 trucks a day transported debris to landfills in Joplin itself, as well as nearby Galena and Lamar.[70][69]

The tornado also led to renewed lead contamination on many Joplin properties. Joplin had been the site of lead mining and processing for decades before cleanup efforts began in the mid-1990s, and the tornado's upheaval of the surface as it swept houses from foundations and uprooted trees re-contaminated about 40% of yards in southern Joplin, leaving behind chunks of raw lead ore the size of tennis or golf balls. The city spent more than $5 million to clean the properties up using grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, scraping off the topsoil and replacing it with clean soil, and further required that builders in the damage area test for lead and clean it up before construction.[71][72]

The tornado also highlighted a new form of disaster response, using social media. This type of disaster response is now known as Social Media Emergency Management. News outlets began aggregating images and video from eyewitnesses shared through social media.[73] Public citizen-led Facebook groups and web sites coordinated information, needs, and offers. The results were so effective the project became a finalist in the 2011 Mashable Awards for Best Social Good Cause Campaign.[74]

President Obama greets a tornado survivor on May 29, 2011.

President Barack Obama toured the community on May 29, flying into Joplin Regional Airport and speaking at a memorial at the Taylor Performing Arts Center at Missouri Southern State University about two miles (3.2 km) north of the worst of the devastation.[75] Obama had been on a state visit to Europe at the time of the storm. Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church were also scheduled to protest the same day in Joplin, but they did not show up. There was a massive counterprotest that was organized in response to the Westboro protest, in which thousands of protesters showed up holding signs saying, "God Loves Joplin" and "We Support You Joplin."[76]

President Obama also delivered the commencement address at Joplin High School on May 21, 2012, a year after the tornado.[77][78]

Eighteen people committed suicide in the wake of the tornado, according to the executive director of the Community Clinic of Southwest Missouri, a co-chair of the city's long-term recovery team. Calls about domestic violence grew in the year following the disaster.[80]