May 23, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, on May 22, 2011, Joplin, Missouri, took a direct hit from the deadliest and costliest tornado in U.S. history, an EF-5 that left a devastating scar on the community. But in the years since, Joplin has rebuilt in extraordinary ways. Former KSNF Channel 16 weatherman Jerimiah Cook, and reporter Gretchen Bolander share a powerful story of loss, love, resilience, and hope in the face of disaster.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
That's our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
On May twenty second, twenty eleven, the city of Joplin, Missouri,
was decimated by the costliest tornado in American history. It
(00:32):
took one hundred and sixty two lives and injured thousands.
The tornado left a permanent scar on the Joplin community.
Joplin has now since rebuilt in a magnificent way with
the scar well, it remains here. To tell the story
of loss and love in Joplin is meteorologist Jeremiah Cook
(00:52):
and Gretchen Bolander. And we're telling this story because on
this day in history, in twenty eleven, the city of Joppolin,
Missouri was struck.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Here's Jeremiah.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
As far as who I am, I'm a Southwest Missouri
farm boy. I love Southwest Missouri. I am convinced that
when the work of saving humanity is done and God retires,
he is going to retire in Southwest Missouri. There's just
no place like it on Earth. I think That's part
of what made it so much fun to be a
(01:26):
journalist and a weather anchor. Here was I was getting
a chance to tell the stories and predict the weather
for my family, for the people I grew up with.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
This was not just another place to work.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
This was my home.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
My wife used to joke that I was married to her,
but the weather was my mistress, and honestly, I guess
that kind.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Of was true.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I loved the problem of trying to figure out.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
What the weather was going to do.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
You know, when you look at the news desk, there's
four people on the news desk. Three of them are
telling you what has already happened, and one of them
is trying to figure out what's going to happen. I
wanted to be that guy that was trying to out
smart mother Nature, if you will. The day of the
(02:19):
Joplin tornado, on one hand, it was the best day
I mean, and it's.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Weird because sitting here thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
On one hand, the number of people that I've heard
say that, you know, we were able to save their lives.
They took our warnings seriously. That their kids are here
today because of what we did. Their grandkids are here today.
They're here today. And my wife was pregnant with our
(02:52):
child at the time. Two weeks to the day later,
she gave birth to our first child. She was at
home in the path of the tornado and she was
watching and.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
She's here today because she took what I.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Was saying on TV seriously, and so is my daughter
and now my son. But at the same time, that
was also kind of the worst day. That's it is
the kind of hellscape I hope I never have to
walk through again.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
So it was a Sunday, and Sunday is a day
off for me. I did not see anything in the
hours leading up to it that made me feel like
I needed to come into the station. And you have
to understand that a lot of times we have a
tornado touchdown in the area, and there's so much rural
area around here that you know, unfortunately it may be
a farmer is affected, you know, a barn could be
lost or some cattle, But the vast majority of touchdowns
(03:56):
in our area don't affect a population center, which, of
course worse is going to be the highest priority. So
I don't remember anything of an HR. I remember being
outside probably within half an hour of the touchdown, and
the sky was blue with a few clouds. It was
a beautiful day. I was outside and having conversation and
(04:17):
just enjoying the day.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Honestly, there's not a lot that happens on Sundays in
this area. At the time, I was the weekend weather anchor,
so obviously I would do the weather for the ten
o'clock newscast.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I also worked as a reporter on the weekends.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
But I had pre shot and pre edited all my stuff,
and I had some overtime, so the news director was
gonna let me take the afternoon off and come in
that evening. But with severe weather, I mean that trumps everything.
When they issued the first warning, I was actually over
(04:59):
at a friend's. We had just set down. I think
we were playing John Madden.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Football, and in fact I think I was winning.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
But anyway, I got the phone call that they had
issued that warning. As I recall, I want to say
that we thought the threat was more central Arkansas, so
I left. I came to the station, and to be
honest with you, for the first couple hours, it was
(05:30):
just a run of the mill event something, you know.
It was nothing we hadn't done ten thousand times before.
Other than the storm moved really really slowly. There were
times the National Weather Service would put out updates and
it was moving.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
You know, one mile per hour. Outside of that, it was.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It was nothing that I hadn't done dozens, if not
hundreds of times in the twelve years of my career
leading up to that.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Nature had other plans, and we.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Have this one, this one pesky cell that fires up
in Lebeck County about sixty miles due west to Joplin
or so. And I'll tell you, it got a little
frustrating because it just did not move. It was kind
of meandering around Parsons, and they finally put out a
(06:27):
tornado warning on it, and from the radar returns, it
looked like it was just.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
Raining, like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
And then when it finally started to move, we all thought, Okay,
finally this is gonna get going.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's gonna get out of the area and we can
get back to business as usual. But it kept moving
and it picked up speed and it made a beeline
for Joplin.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And you've been listening to Jeremiah Cook and Gretchen Bolander,
both of whom are on duty at KSNF channel sixteen
in Joplin, Missouri, and you're hearing the story of the
Joplin Tornado, and my goodness, as Jeremiah said, one pesky
storm cell fired up sixty miles out of Joplin and
started heading right our way. When we come back, more
(07:23):
of the story of Joplin and the tornado that changed
everything here on our American Stories. Folks, if you love
the great American stories we tell and love America like
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A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
(07:45):
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Our American Stories dot com now and go to the
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we returned to
(08:10):
Our American Stories and the story of the Joplin Tornado.
Here again is Jeremiah Cook, the weather man on duty
at the time of the storm and current chaos, and
f reporter Gretchen Bolander.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Station two on Cobby.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
National Weather Services said there was some small rotation on
the west side of Joplin Black Cat and.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Twentieth Street area.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
We had an anonymous phone called two funnel clouds in
a low wall land area, and then they hung out.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I remember when the warnings came down.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
I was sitting there in the studio.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
We were live on air, and I was talking about
what we were seeing on the Doppler radar, and then
one of the camera operators in the studio started snapping
their fingers and waving their hands and they pointed over
at one of the monitors.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
It was our tower camera, and.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I looked at it and I thought, man, I know
what that is.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
I should know what that is.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
But you know sometimes when you see something and you
know what it is, but you see it out of context,
and it's like your mind refuses to recognize what it is.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
That was that moment.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I had seen tornadoes dozens of times in person, and gosh,
I hate to even think about the number of hours
of video I've seen with tornadoes in them. But for
some reason, it's like my mind was refusing to acknowledge
that was a tornado. And there was about a second
(09:54):
and a half of oh, my god, what do I
do now? And I remembered some advice my dad had
given me.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
Dad always said, do something.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Just do something, and you'll figure out how to make
it the right thing. And I just started talking what
we were seeing, where it was headed, what we could
tell from it. I remember seeing these flashes at the
bottom of it, and I thought at first those are
(10:28):
lightning strikes, but it quickly became apparent that it was
the tornado hitting power lines and hitting transformers and hitting houses.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
And that was like the moment when reality came crashing.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
Down, Like that was the nightmare moment.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
You spend all this time preparing yourself, you spend all
this time studying, You spend all this time trying to
figure out how do you stop this from happening. It's
like being in a horror movie and realizing you're powerless
to stop the monster. It's coming for the people you
love and there is nothing you can do about it.
(11:14):
There was a point that day where I didn't know
if my wife was still here, my mom and dad,
my sister's husband, a police officer with Joplin Police Department.
I've got friends all over town. All these people are
(11:34):
in the path of it, and when I started talking again,
I was just praying that I was talking to them,
that I was telling them that this is happening, get.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Out of the way, find shelter, do something.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
I was just hoping to God.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
That they were watching, that they were seeing what I
was seeing, and that we were going to get the
message through to them. You know, it's a heck of
a thing trying to trying to hold it together emotionally
in a moment like that, But you just do it.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
You just you act and you move.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
You know. We got in the crawl space, so we're
pretty insulated from hearing and certainly seeing anything. And the
reports that we continued to get at that point said
that there may have been a touchdown on the northern
outskirts of town from one source that we had heard,
which was a very unpopulated area. So again I started
(12:29):
to think, well, maybe something's happened. And then on my
particular block there was no impact other than the weather
had start started to get cooler. It took a few
minutes before I started to hear from anybody who was
concerned that Joplin was in bad shape.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
You could have filled a library full of books with
what we didn't know in that moment, and I doubt
you could have filled a notepad with what we did know.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
Even I would find out later, even city leaders didn't
know how bad it was at that point because it
was getting dark. It was hard to get around, it
was hard to kind of get arms around it. So
I had actually seen bad damage, but it didn't look
like H five damage.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
It was an EF five. That's the top end. Those
are those are the bad boys.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I want to say that the path of destruction was
around fifteen fifteen and a half miles in length and
three quarters of a mile wide. The wind speeds were
around two hundred and sixty miles an hour. You don't
think about two hundred and sixty mile an hour winds.
That's two hundred and sixty mile an hour winds. That's
like saying a trillion dollars. I think it's a number
(13:34):
that's hard for somebody to fathom. You know, if you've
ever been in a car driving down the road at
fifty miles per hour and you put your hand outside
the window and feel how hard it is to keep
your hand in one spot. I mean, take that and
multiply it by five, and that's what was happening, and
not just in one little bitty spot, but in a
three quarter of a mile wide area. But at that moment,
(13:59):
nobody knew it was an f nobody knew how wide
it was, nobody knew how bad the damage was. So
they put me in a news car and they said
go out. I think I finally got sent home from
work around two thirty three o'clock Sunday morning, and by
that time I had seen.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Large portions of the town.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
Folks were worried that two or three thousand people might
be dead. You have a large section where it almost
looked like the storm had taken a scythe I have
a very good friend who's home the largest highest part
of a wall was about four feet. I'm still shocked
that he actually survived. Everything was gone, you know, roads
(14:44):
had power lines and poles and trees. That was just
debris everywhere. I know a lot of folks would later
talk about this, this tornado Schmitz that was all over everything,
and it was kind of insulation and little pieces of
wood and it's just it's hard to describe what that
was like if you haven't seen it, but it was
almost a coating of almost everything.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
You know, and it's it's funny.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Ten years later, I could still see Saint John's Hospital.
I mean, the tornado hit it, it hit it, it
it it's it's like.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
It specifically targeted the building.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
That was the feeling I always had.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I mean, it broken windows and cars flipped over.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
The MedFlight helicopter.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Looked like it had been used as a child's toy.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
And seeing seeing the building in the shape it was in.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
That was that was tough because it was it was
such an iconic fixture of the community.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
I mean, there was there was.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Nothing that looked like Saint John's. And that was the first, Oh, dear,
sweet God, know a moment. This went from being a
storm to being one of those epoch moments in life
where everything changes, you know. I remember hearing stories afterwards.
(16:17):
I had a couple of friends that were nurses there,
and you know, you talk about heroes, those guys were.
They were cut up, they were bloodied, and their first
thought was get flashlights and find patients, find people who
need help. And you know that's I know, I've talked
(16:38):
about the destruction here, but if you'll hearmor me for
a moment, I said earlier, I can't imagine living anywhere else.
As we were driving across Joplin, the tornado wasn't even
off the ground. You could look to the east and
see the tornado, and men and women were out there
(17:00):
helping their neighbors. They dug themselves out, and then they
went and they found someone else to help.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
That's what it means to be.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
From southwest Missouri.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
I mean, they took one look at this situation and
they said, no, sir, not in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And what a thing to say about your community. The
tornado wasn't even off the ground, and there they were
neighbors digging themselves out and then helping fellow neighbors. And
when we come back, we're going to find out what
happened to Joplin when the tornado passed. Here on our
American story, and we returned to our American stories and
(18:10):
the final portion of the story of the May twenty second,
twenty eleven Joplin tornado and the recovery that happened afterwards.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
When we last.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Left off, Joplin had been devastated by an e F
five tornado. Here again is Jeremiah Cook and current KSNF
reporter Gretchen Bolander with the astonishing story of the recovery
of Joplin.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Over the next couple of weeks, there were some long,
hard days in there, not just dealing with the news,
but my.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
House was damaged, and my wife and I.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Were temporarily living with my mom and dad, and she
was extremely pregnant. Her place of employment had been blown
off the map, so we don't know if she's got
a job any more. We haven't had anybody out to
see how badly damaged our house was and whether or
not it was.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Even going to be salvageable. There were just so many unknowns.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
But the thing that kept me going every day was
going out there and you would see people that had
lost everything, and they weren't worried about themselves. They were
worried about the next person over. If I remember correctly,
We had the roads cleared in three days, and that
(19:32):
was that was something else.
Speaker 6 (19:35):
One of the things we would hear later from FEMA
was that the clearing of roads and the Joplin destruction
zone was one of the fastest operations they had seen
because folks just came. Folks came with their heavy equipment
and started moving things. They jumped in. They didn't wait
for someone to say, yes, go to this area and
do this, and they just started helping.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
We had people who drove their tractors over to move
stuff to be of use. They'd show up with their
pickup trucks and their shovels.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
They would show up with food, they would show up
with water, they would show up with anything you needed,
even if that was just a shoulder to cry on for.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
A minute, they were there.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
I mean, I'll tell you, I feel like it's a
debta gratitude that can never be repaid.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
I do think it definitely speaks to Joplin that people
want to help each other. You know, not everybody's perfect,
but when there is a need, people will pitch in.
And I have to say for myself, you know, as
a reporter, sometimes it's hard not to become cynical because
you do see a lot of bad things that happen
to people that other people do to each other. And
this is one of those cases that really kind of
helps restore your faith in humanity that people want good
(20:39):
things to happen for other people and they don't want
them to feel alone when they might be at their
darkest hour.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
My personal heroes, Mike Wolston, who was mayor of Joplin
at the time. He was out picking up debris in
the city, and I think one of my favorite moments
with Mike he was on TV with Anderson Cooper and
Anderson Cooper, you know, he's trying to interview the mayor
of the town that just got blasted, and Mike is
(21:11):
standing there with work gloves picking debris up off the ground.
And as soon as Anderson says, you know, thank you,
mister mayor, he says, no problem, and he turns around,
he puts his work gloves back on and on National
TV starts picking debris.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Up and throwing it in the back of a wagon
to be hauled off.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It was like getting your batteries recharged when you were
around him, and you just saw the professionalism. I think
I'm a better father, I'm a better person, I'm a
better husband because I was around guys like Mike at
the time that the storm hit, and I got to
see how a first class professional handles themselves.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I remember it was a few weeks after the tornado,
which is funny because the day of the tornado.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I mean, I mean, I can remember that stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Just man, it's like it's like it's in four K
clarity in my mind, the sights, the smells, the sounds,
the actual tactile sensations of the day.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
But those first few weeks afterwards are.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Kind of a blur.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
But I remember at one point I was standing there
with Mike and I said, where do we go from here?
And he said, don't look at this for what it
is right now. We can't change that. Look at it
for what it can be. Look at it for where
we can go. And I think, on one hand, that's
(22:38):
that's how you get through it.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
We had a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
In jop One who decided that this storm was not
going to be what defined us.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
It was going to be what happened next.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
You know, there are some amazing things that have happened
since then. You know, parts of Jopall look completely different today.
These are things that would not have happened, you know,
without the being forced to replace. But they tore down
the old hospital and built a brand new one. To
have a brand new hospital built, you know, just a
few years ago, that's not something every community can say
we have. You know, the housing, you know, we had
(23:16):
a large amount of housing that was lost, all of
that is a brand new Not every single lot's been
built on, but a lot of lots are replaced. I
would have to guess at least three out of four
probably have been replaced with the newer, better housing.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
We would get new reporters that would come to town.
And of course, the first thing we're going to ask
about is the tornado in the recovery. And I remember
there was one young lady who I promised her that
I would take her on a tour. So we're driving
around town and she said, well, this is nice and all,
but where was the tornado?
Speaker 5 (23:51):
I said, you're you.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Are literally sitting at a stop sign in the middle
of where the tornado was And she said, no way.
And this is just a few years later, and there
are houses and the lots are cleaned up, and there
are kids playing in the yards, and businesses are rebuilt
and things are reopened, and the high school is back
up and running, and churches have rebuilt. And the areas
(24:18):
where maybe the recovery hasn't happened yet stand out more
than the areas that have.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
You know, again, the city just decided it's.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
I don't know that it was any one person who
consciously did it, but at some point along the way,
we as a community like collectively decided Nope, we're not
going to tolerate this. We are going to come back bigger,
better and stronger than ever.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
And in a lot of ways that's happened.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
But you know, for me, I'm sorry, this is hard
to talk about. For me, the thing that doesn't go
away is the one hundred and sixty two we weren't able.
We weren't able to say. I oftentimes wonder what could
(25:16):
I have done differently? You know, my mind wanders back
to that because every Christmas, every Birthday, fourth of July,
there's one hundred and sixty two families that they.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Don't have that.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And I guess, in a way, I blame myself a
little bit for that, that maybe I should have done
something different.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
I don't know what that would have been, but part
of me feels like I should still try.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
We feel like we owe it.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
To those people that aren't here now to live the
best lives possible, to make Joblin the best community possible,
to make Southwest Missouri and the four States as a
whole the best it can possibly be, because we owe
it to those folks. I am so proud of this
community and how we've recovered. And you know, we're no
(26:11):
different than any other town. We have our problems, but
you know, for one moment, everything that was right and
perfect about humanity existed here in Joblin. I guess that's
the big takeaway is when push came to shove, now,
(26:32):
I wouldn't have wanted to have anybody else at my back.
When disaster does have them, when these moments do strike,
it's the person on your left and the person on
your right. That's who you're going to have to depend on.
You know, That's what it was. That's what it was
in that moment.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
It was love.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Everybody set aside their differences and.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
They came together.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
And great job is always to Monty on the piece,
and a special thanks to Jeremiah Cook and Gretchen Bolander.
The story of the twenty eleven Joplin Tornado and Joplin's
recovery here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
That's our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
On May twenty second, twenty eleven, the city of Joplin, Missouri,
was decimated by the costliest tornado in American history. It
(00:32):
took one hundred and sixty two lives and injured thousands.
The tornado left a permanent scar on the Joplin community.
Joplin has now since rebuilt in a magnificent way with
the scar well, it remains here. To tell the story
of loss and love in Joplin is meteorologist Jeremiah Cook
(00:52):
and Gretchen Bolander. And we're telling this story because on
this day in history, in twenty eleven, the city of Joppolin,
Missouri was struck.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Here's Jeremiah.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
As far as who I am, I'm a Southwest Missouri
farm boy. I love Southwest Missouri. I am convinced that
when the work of saving humanity is done and God retires,
he is going to retire in Southwest Missouri. There's just
no place like it on Earth. I think That's part
of what made it so much fun to be a
(01:26):
journalist and a weather anchor. Here was I was getting
a chance to tell the stories and predict the weather
for my family, for the people I grew up with.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
This was not just another place to work.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
This was my home.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
My wife used to joke that I was married to her,
but the weather was my mistress, and honestly, I guess
that kind.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
Of was true.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I loved the problem of trying to figure out.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
What the weather was going to do.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
You know, when you look at the news desk, there's
four people on the news desk. Three of them are
telling you what has already happened, and one of them
is trying to figure out what's going to happen. I
wanted to be that guy that was trying to out
smart mother Nature, if you will. The day of the
(02:19):
Joplin tornado, on one hand, it was the best day
I mean, and it's.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Weird because sitting here thinking about it.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
On one hand, the number of people that I've heard
say that, you know, we were able to save their lives.
They took our warnings seriously. That their kids are here
today because of what we did. Their grandkids are here today.
They're here today. And my wife was pregnant with our
(02:52):
child at the time. Two weeks to the day later,
she gave birth to our first child. She was at
home in the path of the tornado and she was
watching and.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
She's here today because she took what I.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Was saying on TV seriously, and so is my daughter
and now my son. But at the same time, that
was also kind of the worst day. That's it is
the kind of hellscape I hope I never have to
walk through again.
Speaker 6 (03:32):
So it was a Sunday, and Sunday is a day
off for me. I did not see anything in the
hours leading up to it that made me feel like
I needed to come into the station. And you have
to understand that a lot of times we have a
tornado touchdown in the area, and there's so much rural
area around here that you know, unfortunately it may be
a farmer is affected, you know, a barn could be
lost or some cattle, But the vast majority of touchdowns
(03:56):
in our area don't affect a population center, which, of
course worse is going to be the highest priority. So
I don't remember anything of an HR. I remember being
outside probably within half an hour of the touchdown, and
the sky was blue with a few clouds. It was
a beautiful day. I was outside and having conversation and
(04:17):
just enjoying the day.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Honestly, there's not a lot that happens on Sundays in
this area. At the time, I was the weekend weather anchor,
so obviously I would do the weather for the ten
o'clock newscast.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I also worked as a reporter on the weekends.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
But I had pre shot and pre edited all my stuff,
and I had some overtime, so the news director was
gonna let me take the afternoon off and come in
that evening. But with severe weather, I mean that trumps everything.
When they issued the first warning, I was actually over
(04:59):
at a friend's. We had just set down. I think
we were playing John Madden.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
Football, and in fact I think I was winning.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
But anyway, I got the phone call that they had
issued that warning. As I recall, I want to say
that we thought the threat was more central Arkansas, so
I left. I came to the station, and to be
honest with you, for the first couple hours, it was
(05:30):
just a run of the mill event something, you know.
It was nothing we hadn't done ten thousand times before.
Other than the storm moved really really slowly. There were
times the National Weather Service would put out updates and
it was moving.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
You know, one mile per hour. Outside of that, it was.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It was nothing that I hadn't done dozens, if not
hundreds of times in the twelve years of my career
leading up to that.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Nature had other plans, and we.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Have this one, this one pesky cell that fires up
in Lebeck County about sixty miles due west to Joplin
or so. And I'll tell you, it got a little
frustrating because it just did not move. It was kind
of meandering around Parsons, and they finally put out a
(06:27):
tornado warning on it, and from the radar returns, it
looked like it was just.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
Raining, like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
And then when it finally started to move, we all thought, Okay,
finally this is gonna get going.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's gonna get out of the area and we can
get back to business as usual. But it kept moving
and it picked up speed and it made a beeline
for Joplin.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And you've been listening to Jeremiah Cook and Gretchen Bolander,
both of whom are on duty at KSNF channel sixteen
in Joplin, Missouri, and you're hearing the story of the
Joplin Tornado, and my goodness, as Jeremiah said, one pesky
storm cell fired up sixty miles out of Joplin and
started heading right our way. When we come back, more
(07:23):
of the story of Joplin and the tornado that changed
everything here on our American Stories. Folks, if you love
the great American stories we tell and love America like
we do, we're asking you to become a part of
the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America
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A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
(07:45):
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Our American Stories dot com now and go to the
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we returned to
(08:10):
Our American Stories and the story of the Joplin Tornado.
Here again is Jeremiah Cook, the weather man on duty
at the time of the storm and current chaos, and
f reporter Gretchen Bolander.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Station two on Cobby.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
National Weather Services said there was some small rotation on
the west side of Joplin Black Cat and.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Twentieth Street area.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
We had an anonymous phone called two funnel clouds in
a low wall land area, and then they hung out.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I remember when the warnings came down.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
I was sitting there in the studio.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
We were live on air, and I was talking about
what we were seeing on the Doppler radar, and then
one of the camera operators in the studio started snapping
their fingers and waving their hands and they pointed over
at one of the monitors.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
It was our tower camera, and.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I looked at it and I thought, man, I know
what that is.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
I should know what that is.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
But you know sometimes when you see something and you
know what it is, but you see it out of context,
and it's like your mind refuses to recognize what it is.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
That was that moment.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I had seen tornadoes dozens of times in person, and gosh,
I hate to even think about the number of hours
of video I've seen with tornadoes in them. But for
some reason, it's like my mind was refusing to acknowledge
that was a tornado. And there was about a second
(09:54):
and a half of oh, my god, what do I
do now? And I remembered some advice my dad had
given me.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
Dad always said, do something.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Just do something, and you'll figure out how to make
it the right thing. And I just started talking what
we were seeing, where it was headed, what we could
tell from it. I remember seeing these flashes at the
bottom of it, and I thought at first those are
(10:28):
lightning strikes, but it quickly became apparent that it was
the tornado hitting power lines and hitting transformers and hitting houses.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
And that was like the moment when reality came crashing.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
Down, Like that was the nightmare moment.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
You spend all this time preparing yourself, you spend all
this time studying, You spend all this time trying to
figure out how do you stop this from happening. It's
like being in a horror movie and realizing you're powerless
to stop the monster. It's coming for the people you
love and there is nothing you can do about it.
(11:14):
There was a point that day where I didn't know
if my wife was still here, my mom and dad,
my sister's husband, a police officer with Joplin Police Department.
I've got friends all over town. All these people are
(11:34):
in the path of it, and when I started talking again,
I was just praying that I was talking to them,
that I was telling them that this is happening, get.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Out of the way, find shelter, do something.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
I was just hoping to God.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
That they were watching, that they were seeing what I
was seeing, and that we were going to get the
message through to them. You know, it's a heck of
a thing trying to trying to hold it together emotionally
in a moment like that, But you just do it.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
You just you act and you move.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
You know. We got in the crawl space, so we're
pretty insulated from hearing and certainly seeing anything. And the
reports that we continued to get at that point said
that there may have been a touchdown on the northern
outskirts of town from one source that we had heard,
which was a very unpopulated area. So again I started
(12:29):
to think, well, maybe something's happened. And then on my
particular block there was no impact other than the weather
had start started to get cooler. It took a few
minutes before I started to hear from anybody who was
concerned that Joplin was in bad shape.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
You could have filled a library full of books with
what we didn't know in that moment, and I doubt
you could have filled a notepad with what we did know.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
Even I would find out later, even city leaders didn't
know how bad it was at that point because it
was getting dark. It was hard to get around, it
was hard to kind of get arms around it. So
I had actually seen bad damage, but it didn't look
like H five damage.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
It was an EF five. That's the top end. Those
are those are the bad boys.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I want to say that the path of destruction was
around fifteen fifteen and a half miles in length and
three quarters of a mile wide. The wind speeds were
around two hundred and sixty miles an hour. You don't
think about two hundred and sixty mile an hour winds.
That's two hundred and sixty mile an hour winds. That's
like saying a trillion dollars. I think it's a number
(13:34):
that's hard for somebody to fathom. You know, if you've
ever been in a car driving down the road at
fifty miles per hour and you put your hand outside
the window and feel how hard it is to keep
your hand in one spot. I mean, take that and
multiply it by five, and that's what was happening, and
not just in one little bitty spot, but in a
three quarter of a mile wide area. But at that moment,
(13:59):
nobody knew it was an f nobody knew how wide
it was, nobody knew how bad the damage was. So
they put me in a news car and they said
go out. I think I finally got sent home from
work around two thirty three o'clock Sunday morning, and by
that time I had seen.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Large portions of the town.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
Folks were worried that two or three thousand people might
be dead. You have a large section where it almost
looked like the storm had taken a scythe I have
a very good friend who's home the largest highest part
of a wall was about four feet. I'm still shocked
that he actually survived. Everything was gone, you know, roads
(14:44):
had power lines and poles and trees. That was just
debris everywhere. I know a lot of folks would later
talk about this, this tornado Schmitz that was all over everything,
and it was kind of insulation and little pieces of
wood and it's just it's hard to describe what that
was like if you haven't seen it, but it was
almost a coating of almost everything.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
You know, and it's it's funny.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Ten years later, I could still see Saint John's Hospital.
I mean, the tornado hit it, it hit it, it
it it's it's like.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
It specifically targeted the building.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
That was the feeling I always had.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I mean, it broken windows and cars flipped over.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
The MedFlight helicopter.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Looked like it had been used as a child's toy.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
And seeing seeing the building in the shape it was in.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
That was that was tough because it was it was
such an iconic fixture of the community.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
I mean, there was there was.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Nothing that looked like Saint John's. And that was the first, Oh, dear,
sweet God, know a moment. This went from being a
storm to being one of those epoch moments in life
where everything changes, you know. I remember hearing stories afterwards.
(16:17):
I had a couple of friends that were nurses there,
and you know, you talk about heroes, those guys were.
They were cut up, they were bloodied, and their first
thought was get flashlights and find patients, find people who
need help. And you know that's I know, I've talked
(16:38):
about the destruction here, but if you'll hearmor me for
a moment, I said earlier, I can't imagine living anywhere else.
As we were driving across Joplin, the tornado wasn't even
off the ground. You could look to the east and
see the tornado, and men and women were out there
(17:00):
helping their neighbors. They dug themselves out, and then they
went and they found someone else to help.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
That's what it means to be.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
From southwest Missouri.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
I mean, they took one look at this situation and
they said, no, sir, not in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And what a thing to say about your community. The
tornado wasn't even off the ground, and there they were
neighbors digging themselves out and then helping fellow neighbors. And
when we come back, we're going to find out what
happened to Joplin when the tornado passed. Here on our
American story, and we returned to our American stories and
(18:10):
the final portion of the story of the May twenty second,
twenty eleven Joplin tornado and the recovery that happened afterwards.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
When we last.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Left off, Joplin had been devastated by an e F
five tornado. Here again is Jeremiah Cook and current KSNF
reporter Gretchen Bolander with the astonishing story of the recovery
of Joplin.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Over the next couple of weeks, there were some long,
hard days in there, not just dealing with the news,
but my.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
House was damaged, and my wife and I.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Were temporarily living with my mom and dad, and she
was extremely pregnant. Her place of employment had been blown
off the map, so we don't know if she's got
a job any more. We haven't had anybody out to
see how badly damaged our house was and whether or
not it was.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Even going to be salvageable. There were just so many unknowns.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
But the thing that kept me going every day was
going out there and you would see people that had
lost everything, and they weren't worried about themselves. They were
worried about the next person over. If I remember correctly,
We had the roads cleared in three days, and that
(19:32):
was that was something else.
Speaker 6 (19:35):
One of the things we would hear later from FEMA
was that the clearing of roads and the Joplin destruction
zone was one of the fastest operations they had seen
because folks just came. Folks came with their heavy equipment
and started moving things. They jumped in. They didn't wait
for someone to say, yes, go to this area and
do this, and they just started helping.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
We had people who drove their tractors over to move
stuff to be of use. They'd show up with their
pickup trucks and their shovels.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
They would show up with food, they would show up
with water, they would show up with anything you needed,
even if that was just a shoulder to cry on for.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
A minute, they were there.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
I mean, I'll tell you, I feel like it's a
debta gratitude that can never be repaid.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
I do think it definitely speaks to Joplin that people
want to help each other. You know, not everybody's perfect,
but when there is a need, people will pitch in.
And I have to say for myself, you know, as
a reporter, sometimes it's hard not to become cynical because
you do see a lot of bad things that happen
to people that other people do to each other. And
this is one of those cases that really kind of
helps restore your faith in humanity that people want good
(20:39):
things to happen for other people and they don't want
them to feel alone when they might be at their
darkest hour.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
My personal heroes, Mike Wolston, who was mayor of Joplin
at the time. He was out picking up debris in
the city, and I think one of my favorite moments
with Mike he was on TV with Anderson Cooper and
Anderson Cooper, you know, he's trying to interview the mayor
of the town that just got blasted, and Mike is
(21:11):
standing there with work gloves picking debris up off the ground.
And as soon as Anderson says, you know, thank you,
mister mayor, he says, no problem, and he turns around,
he puts his work gloves back on and on National
TV starts picking debris.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Up and throwing it in the back of a wagon
to be hauled off.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It was like getting your batteries recharged when you were
around him, and you just saw the professionalism. I think
I'm a better father, I'm a better person, I'm a
better husband because I was around guys like Mike at
the time that the storm hit, and I got to
see how a first class professional handles themselves.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I remember it was a few weeks after the tornado,
which is funny because the day of the tornado.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I mean, I mean, I can remember that stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Just man, it's like it's like it's in four K
clarity in my mind, the sights, the smells, the sounds,
the actual tactile sensations of the day.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
But those first few weeks afterwards are.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Kind of a blur.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
But I remember at one point I was standing there
with Mike and I said, where do we go from here?
And he said, don't look at this for what it
is right now. We can't change that. Look at it
for what it can be. Look at it for where
we can go. And I think, on one hand, that's
(22:38):
that's how you get through it.
Speaker 5 (22:40):
We had a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
In jop One who decided that this storm was not
going to be what defined us.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
It was going to be what happened next.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
You know, there are some amazing things that have happened
since then. You know, parts of Jopall look completely different today.
These are things that would not have happened, you know,
without the being forced to replace. But they tore down
the old hospital and built a brand new one. To
have a brand new hospital built, you know, just a
few years ago, that's not something every community can say
we have. You know, the housing, you know, we had
(23:16):
a large amount of housing that was lost, all of
that is a brand new Not every single lot's been
built on, but a lot of lots are replaced. I
would have to guess at least three out of four
probably have been replaced with the newer, better housing.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
We would get new reporters that would come to town.
And of course, the first thing we're going to ask
about is the tornado in the recovery. And I remember
there was one young lady who I promised her that
I would take her on a tour. So we're driving
around town and she said, well, this is nice and all,
but where was the tornado?
Speaker 5 (23:51):
I said, you're you.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Are literally sitting at a stop sign in the middle
of where the tornado was And she said, no way.
And this is just a few years later, and there
are houses and the lots are cleaned up, and there
are kids playing in the yards, and businesses are rebuilt
and things are reopened, and the high school is back
up and running, and churches have rebuilt. And the areas
(24:18):
where maybe the recovery hasn't happened yet stand out more
than the areas that have.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
You know, again, the city just decided it's.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
I don't know that it was any one person who
consciously did it, but at some point along the way,
we as a community like collectively decided Nope, we're not
going to tolerate this. We are going to come back bigger,
better and stronger than ever.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
And in a lot of ways that's happened.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
But you know, for me, I'm sorry, this is hard
to talk about. For me, the thing that doesn't go
away is the one hundred and sixty two we weren't able.
We weren't able to say. I oftentimes wonder what could
(25:16):
I have done differently? You know, my mind wanders back
to that because every Christmas, every Birthday, fourth of July,
there's one hundred and sixty two families that they.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Don't have that.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And I guess, in a way, I blame myself a
little bit for that, that maybe I should have done
something different.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
I don't know what that would have been, but part
of me feels like I should still try.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
We feel like we owe it.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
To those people that aren't here now to live the
best lives possible, to make Joblin the best community possible,
to make Southwest Missouri and the four States as a
whole the best it can possibly be, because we owe
it to those folks. I am so proud of this
community and how we've recovered. And you know, we're no
(26:11):
different than any other town. We have our problems, but
you know, for one moment, everything that was right and
perfect about humanity existed here in Joblin. I guess that's
the big takeaway is when push came to shove, now,
(26:32):
I wouldn't have wanted to have anybody else at my back.
When disaster does have them, when these moments do strike,
it's the person on your left and the person on
your right. That's who you're going to have to depend on.
You know, That's what it was. That's what it was
in that moment.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
It was love.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Everybody set aside their differences and.
Speaker 5 (26:55):
They came together.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
And great job is always to Monty on the piece,
and a special thanks to Jeremiah Cook and Gretchen Bolander.
The story of the twenty eleven Joplin Tornado and Joplin's
recovery here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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