March 13, 2024 • 26 mins
Joplin Tornado one of the worst tornados ever! part 3 of 3. This true scary story is from Episode #7 of Your Scary Stories. Your Scary Stories is a show focused on sharing your true scary stories LIVE every Monday at 10:30pm EST. To learn more about the Show, or to submit your true scary story go to YourScaryStories.com.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
We'll jump back into the Joplin tornado. So we're gonna change it up a
bit this time. We're gonna startoff with the final clip the aftermath of
the storm, and then I'll pickback up and we'll finish off. Sounds
good to me. There are peoplethat are there, got to be answered
right now, Josh, Their peoplefatalities right now, people are trapped,
(00:27):
Josh, that used to be here, they're totally gone. This is bad.
My gosh, this is bad.Oh my gosh. Okay, are
you talking to Kena? What Iwanted to do? Where? I don't
know? Looking around, I don'tknow. Look at that that is destroyed
completely. We're gonna turn around.Oh my gosh, oh oh oh,
(01:11):
you have through that way. Yesee we come in the bullet watch see
why that is gone? Break above? Oh no, my dad, one,
(01:38):
I love. I cannot believe this. The lady out with a broken
back, broadcasting live from the darkenedk d r G twenty four hour Storm
Center. Power is out. Weare running a backup generators at this hour.
I understand whether I got alication thatthe hospitals were in from here,
(02:00):
I'm trying to get to that sideof town. There's just people Joshua done
stobbing hundred. A woman was reportedlyseeing an X ray X rays in her
front yard, and that just givesyou a visual to how far this damage
is reaching. But if you thinkthis is bad, check out this over
here. This is a neighborhood thatis completely flattened by this tornado. There
(02:23):
are dozens of people walking up anddown the street trying to figure out it
through. We have sustained a majordirect hit here in Joplin. Now,
Chad, you've described some damage andwe're trying to understand the situation. And
as we can understand it now,Joplin will never be the same after this
tornadic event. And when I wastwenty fourth and Main, I could look
(02:46):
all the way to the west andall the way to the east, and
I saw no structure stand up andthey're still yeah. I don't recognize where
I'm at right now. I don'ttak a blue lip soon. Don't want
to ride somewhere, dude, Idon't want I don't I don't know if
I want to go here. Idon't know. I don't want to be
(03:08):
somebody can help, don help,thank We have picture all right, here's
the gas station that we were at. We parked right over there. Our
car got blown away. The frontdoor was just right there. The job
(03:35):
of tornado was getting where from ahalf mile to three quarter a mile wide
at its widest point, and wason the ground for about thirteen miles.
Approximately seventy five hundred homes were damaged. Okay, after math and impact of
the jop On tornado. A preliminarysurvey of the tornado damage by the National
Weather Service office in Springfield began onMay twenty third. The following day,
(03:57):
the initial survey confirmed a violent ratedEF four damage. Surveys, however,
found evidence of more intense damage asthe tornado was upgraded to an EF five
with winds between two hundred and twentyfive to two hundred and fifty miles an
hour. This is actually an interestingthing because for some reason, don't I
don't know why, there's a lotof rating disputes on that, and we'll
(04:18):
get to that here a little bit, but this seemed to be a common
thing where the rating if this thingwas actually an EF five or not.
But obviously the damage was crazy.The scope of the damage was immense.
According to a local branch of theAmerican Red Cross. About twenty five percent
of Joplin was destroyed, though emergencyofficials reported some level of damage to about
(04:39):
seventy five percent of the city.A week after the tornado, Joplins mayor
estimated that twenty five percent of thebusinesses licensed in the city were damaged or
destroyed. Nine hundred and sixty fourbuildings were damaged in Joplin, including seven
four hundred and eleven residential buildings andfive hundred and fifty three non residential.
At least thousand, seven hundred andthirty four of those buildings, including three
(05:03):
one hundred and eighty one residential buildingsand all five hundred and fifty three to
none were non residential buildings, sustainedso much damage they were considered destroyed from
an insurance standpoint. According to theFEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency, two hundred
and sixty four homes were impacted andof those, eight hundred and eighty four
(05:26):
were significantly damaged and four thy threehundred and eighty were considered destroyed. So
this is some damage to the infrastructureof Joplin. Tornado also severely damaged critical
infrastructure to the city, hampering emergencyresponse and recovery efforts we talked about the
two of the main three fire stationswere completely destroyed. Two hospitals both had
(05:48):
damaged, one destroyed, and approximatelyfour thousand electrical distribution poles were damaged.
More than one hundred and ten milesof distribution line brought down, one hundred
and thirty five transmission towers affected.All the electrical work in the path was
basically destroyed. Twenty thousand people wereleft without power, and of those home
(06:12):
left without power, they didn't getthe back till about ten to twelve days
later, which is huge. Thecost of rebuilding just the electrical system was
calculated to be about twenty six twentyseven million dollars to the infrastructure of electricity.
The tornado also caused about four thousandleaks and water service lines, dropping
Joplin's water system pressure below operating level. Approximately three thousand, five hundred gas
(06:35):
meters and fight and fifty five thousandfeet of gas maine were damaged, and
it took weeks to get to everygas leak figure out where they're all coming
from. Some damaged mains could notbe shut off because they were serving in
critical facilities like the healthcare systems.The loan remaining hospital and Joplin obviously couldn't
(06:57):
shut everything off because of you needat the hospital. Twenty one cell phone
towers were down and fiber cables damaged. Cellular communications rendered useless, disabling voice
calls and texts. Insurance. Anearly estimate from the catastrophic risk modeling from
Equate placed the insurance losses from thetornado at three billion dollars USD. By
(07:23):
mid June, more than nineteen thousandinsurance claims had been filed, a number
that eventually rose to sixty one thousand, a total payout for more than two
billion dollars, thirty one percent goingto homeowners, five percent to those who
lost vehicles. The impact of theinsurance industry was not so much due to
the number of claims, but thecumulative effect of such a large number of
(07:45):
total losses. In those claims,more than twenty five hundred local people employed
and insurance were involved in some capacity. The two point eight billion dollars in
damage is the largest amount for atornado since nineteen fifty casualties. We talked
about this earlier. The official deathtoll from the National Weather Service listed at
one hundred and fifty eight, whilethe city at Joplin listed at one hundred
(08:07):
and sixty one. Shortly after thetornado, authorities had listed thirteen hundred people
as missing. The number quickly dwindleddown as they were accounted for. Many
people were reported to have been trappedin destroyed houses. Nearly thirty people were
actually rescued the following day after thistornado. That happened at six pm,
(08:28):
so the following day they had beentrapped there the whole day they were rescued.
Of the one hundred and forty sixsets of remains recovered from the rebel,
one hundred and thirty four victims havebeen positively identified, so not even
all identified. This total number includedfour sets of partial remains, some of
which had been longer to the sameperson. A couple weeks later they identified
(08:50):
four more people. Of course,there were people that you know, banished
in this completely infants and terrible thingslike that. The Joplin Globe reported that
fifty four percent of the people killedin that were killed died in the residents,
thirty two percent diet and non residentialareas, and fourteen percent died in
(09:11):
vehicles or outdoors. Job one officialsafter the tornado, announced plans to require
that they submitted this proposal hurricane tiesor other fasteners between houses of their foundations,
something that would cost about seven hundreddollars per house. Officials rejected this
to have these be a requirement inbasements, and they also rejected in a
(09:35):
proposal of having basements being a requirementin new houses. Officials strangely noted that
as of two two thousand and nine, only twenty eight percent of job ones
new homes had basements, compared tothirty eight percent two decades before. But
it's important to note also that alot more population increased and that than the
previous survey. Injuries range from cuts, bruises to impaalments by large debris.
(10:01):
To the conclusion of that oney,five hundred people were injured and or severely
injured enough to seek medical treatment.It also says that they rescued nearly one
thousand pets, with two hundred andninety two almost three hundred homeowners rating dispute.
Like I said, the American Societyof Civil Engineers and the National Weather
(10:22):
Service went back and forwards on ifthis was an EF four EF five.
National Weather Service kind of got thelast gets the last call here. They
do agree with the civil engineers thatat a lot of the damage was equivalent
to EF three e F four throughoutit, But there was certainly things that
happened in several areas, even thoughthey may have been small areas, that
(10:46):
were undeniably EF five if you gooff of the capability of it. Example,
the manhole cover, what was ableto do with impalement? That debate
went down as a EF five onewas all said done, Yeah, okay,
So just to go into that,concrete being removed, manhole covers,
reinforce porches, driveways, asphalt beingripped from the earth, the presence of
(11:11):
wind road structured debris, instances ofvery large vehicles such as buses, vans,
and semi trucks being thrown hundreds ofyards or several blocks from their original
points of origin, the fact thatsome homeowners actually never really relocated their vehicles
again, and the overwhelming extent andtotality the destruction were also put into consideration
to finalize that as any F five. Here's some facts on the cleanup.
(11:35):
The Joplin tornado generated an estimated threemillion cubic yards of debris and amount sufficient
to cover a football field one hundredand twenty stories high. Removal efforts lasted
for months, and at their height, more than four hundred and ten trucks
a day were removing debris to landfillsand Joplin as well as nearby counties.
The tornado also led to a renewedlead contamination on many of Joplin's properties.
(12:01):
Because if you remember, we wentback to the beginning the story, that's
what this area was founded on leadand development of that. So the reason
it was able to kind of leadto this reoccurring of lead contamination here is
because there's a lot of ruminiscce ofthis and underground trees, foundations, stuff
like that, and it was actuallyuprooted, and they found about forty percent
(12:26):
of the yards and southern Joplin hadbeen contaminated. Chunks of raw lead were
in some places. They were sittingaround the size of tennis balls or golf
balls. The city spent more thanfive million just to clean up this lead
contamination. They had to get grantsto do so. Basically they had to
handle this seriously, removing the lead, cleaning the topsoil, putting new top
(12:48):
soil down, and of course theyhad to pass requirements before, like anything
that could be rebuilt had to betested before it could be. FEMA maintained
a large presence after this following thetornado, with as many as eight hundred
and twenty employees working in the city. The city warned by federal officials that
it should expect to lose twenty fivepercent of its population following the tornado.
(13:11):
They actually responded pretty quickly, though, and built an average of five houses
a week between twenty eleven and twentytwenty two. Most businesses reopen and more
than three hundred new businesses opened betweenthese last was it twelve years? And
here's the last interesting fact here.There was some conversation about the mental health
(13:31):
impact that it had. There weretwenty people they said, committed suicide and
the wake of this and obviously hada big impact on the mental health for
the residents for quite a while,and I'm sure to this day it's not
something that you know, goes away. Calls about domestic violence grew for the
(13:52):
less next several years, much higherthan they were post this tornado. That's
rough, really bad. Yeah,everybody's standing. They need of storms shelter
after that. Yeah, Yeah,that was a lot of debris. They
said, how many football field highone hundred and twenty stories high, one
hundred yards wide, hundred and twentystories high. This doesn't even make sense,
(14:16):
no, But but when you lookat the video that we watched,
you can see how it would easilybe that. Now. I would do
want to talk about that video alittle bit because it did a good job
of grasping severity of the situation.So the person a couple people, but
one comment really stood out to mesaid, I don't even know where I'm
at. Yeah. Now, soimagine you went outside right now and everything
(14:37):
was just wiped out right, youwouldn't know where you're at. There's no
street signs, there's no structures standingright, How would you know where you're
actually at? Yeah? That's thatis crazy. One thing you were talking
about there was they thought about passinglike the requirement to have hurricane ties to
(14:58):
prevent debris and stuff like that,and it'd be like seven hundred dollars per
building. When you said that,I was like, man, hurri getting
ties it? What those are?What? I looked it up while you're
reading. I bought these things formy SHD for the rafters. They're a
bucket piece. Yeah, I don'tknow, it says to the foundation.
I don't know what all that consistsof. They're they're for you could use
(15:22):
it for like basically everything, butbasically tying it in a certain way to
something else to just prevent it fromflying off. And yeah, it ties
like the floor joists to the foundationor the rafters to the Yeah frame,
how how cheap can you be too? You know, well to not They
(15:43):
try to also go as extreme andyou can call it extreme or not extreme
as to make it where you hadto have a basement in any new house
that didn't get passed. I'm notsurprised. That's a pretty that's a significant
increase, but makes you see whyin Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, they have
much more strict requirements on building codesand much higher rate of shelters. What
(16:07):
did it so? Interesting enough?Here also the number of basements being put
in new homes that actually decreased fromthe two decades prior. What do you
think that is? When I lookedat it, I thought it was probably
because a pretty booming population, sobuilding a lot of homes just didn't put
basements in them. Yeah, huh, she's so much sunpacked there. It's
(16:30):
just weird that you know they wouldn't. There are some things that are makes
sense to add in, and somethinglike hurricane ties cheap add for future buildings
that should have been a requirement.After that, you talk about how this
compares to hurricane that's like it's likeeighty ninety mile an hour. No,
no, but okay, so there'snothing with that powerful in the world as
(16:53):
a tornado that we just talked about, Well, it's the equivalent of a
bomb, atomic bomb. But theproblem with the hurricane is its sustain winds
can last twenty four hours, canlast twelve hours, yeah, which makes
it very deadly, right, youknow what I mean, that countless surge,
(17:14):
right, yeah, yeah, butthis event is quick, this tornado
when tornado happens. But I thinkthis is so scary to me because you're
really powerless. You can do.You can get these hurricane ties and stuff,
but from the way it looked atsome of these neighborhoods, they're just
all wiped out. Yeah no,yeah, there was no stop in that.
(17:40):
I think the idea is to preventflying debris exactly. No, you're
right, because that's becomes the mostdangerous thing yeah, and they talked about
all the different number of people thatwent to the hospital with impalement. And
when I was editing a lot ofthis footage, there was a nurse talking
about some of the different things shesaw that we're stuck in people. Is
terrifying. Can't imagine just from thewind, different vibe tonight on your scary
(18:07):
stories. But yeah, a trulyterrifying story. And I have never been
seen a tornado. You've never beenin one? What did you say?
You say you've never been in one. I've never actually seen one either.
I've been about four miles away fromone when I was in southern Indiana,
but I didn't see it, andit was F one or two. It
was not like this. Obviously,there was this one time. I'm not
(18:30):
harm so certain it was a tornado. It probably wasn't. They never officially
said it was. But I wasin the restaurant and the roof got peeled
off the top, and I doknow for a fact that I felt like
the windows were going to explode atone point, and so like it may
(18:52):
have just been a straight line windthat was this out of control, yeah,
or it was like a lolo ortornado that touched down for a split
second and then ripped it off andwent away. But yeah, this like
this is like what we just sawwas like hand of God level. Uh
yeah, how many miles? Howlong was this thing? Cach It said
(19:17):
it was touchdown in a mile widefor about sixteen miles of going across you
said earlier it was going at tenmiles an hour. At one point it
is going ten miles an hour wasjust slow. So that was like almost
an hour or something like that thatit was going through that area. Yeah,
(19:38):
so that okay, So aerial surveyswhen you go back and they showed
that they're at the end of thevideo, are insane, A drone,
helicopter, whatever you want to lookat it with. Yeah, twenty one
miles long and up to a milewide. This thing stayed on the ground
for twenty one miles and we actually, you go back to earlier, the
(19:59):
first part of this, you actuallygot to see it develop on camera,
which, yeah, I don't wantto say was pretty cool. But it
went from a tiny It went fromlike a normal tornado to this, like
you said, an act of God, this monster in seconds. Yeah,
that was ridiculous. Yeah, I'veseen some footage before, but I never
saw all that like aftermath or anythinglike that, or even like the during
(20:23):
of it. And so some ofthat photage there was just absolutely terrifying to
look at and just it makes youwhat you feel bad watching it, but
it also makes you count your blessingsthat you've done. You're not if you're
not there. Yeah, a lotof people said that they referred to what
the scene that they saw as peoplewalking like zombies down the street with very
(20:47):
like a few possessions they found.I could see that. What did you
think about the infrastructure? How itmentioned that That's something I guess you don't
typically think about right when you thinkit, right, all those gas lines
and everything that are ruptured and everythingwater, gas and electrical. It just
decimated the electrical infrastructure in that town. I mean this stuff one hundred and
ten miles of distribution power line.Yeah, stuff like that takes forever roof
(21:10):
fix you, uh, And sothat being destroyed that also slows down the
repairs, right, because if youdon't have access to power to do things,
you can't fix things. No.Today, there was a lot of
people on the when I researched thisthat were talking about how they were trying
to get they were out of townand they were trying to get back home
(21:33):
into Joplin after this one. Theydidn't know where they're at. There's no
street signs, and that's something youkind of take for granted when you don't
have anything to reference. And twothere was so much debris. Couldn't even
get to your house. Yeah,they people talked about parking half a mile
away and walking there. You don'teven know what you're out walk to.
(21:53):
Like, well, in that onereference that guy said when he looked in
two different directions, is nothing.Yeah, all. And then they showed
that neighborhood outside of the hospital gonegone. It's like there's nothing to go
back to, it's gone. Andthat is insanity to me. It's like
(22:15):
you think about it's like what wouldyou even do? Like can you process?
That's why I'm not surprised at thelike they said, the increase in
suicides and stuff like that. Yeah, stuff like that takes a toll on
human human beings that is just hardto quantify. And it's like being at
war. It's like you said,a bomb. Yeah, that's why everybody
(22:37):
kept saying, it's like a bombdestroyed everything. There was a there was
a what did you think about thepizza hut manager that was killed? That's
terrify you can see, like tryingto get everybody into a safe place.
That was actually a really sad part. I was thinking about that. I
was thinking about, you know,walkings that've been in and it's like they're
(22:57):
a pretty structurally Usually they're a goodplace to put the girl. They have
wall there in the middle of theplace. Yeah, I mean yeah,
but there they are so big andso like, you know, you try
to save everybody and you're not gonnahave that kind of room. Yeah.
No, I've never seen a walkin that could fit the amount of people
he was trying to put in there. One story I heard and I didn't
(23:21):
I didn't play it. Sure,it is incredibly sad, You're sad stories
tonight was they were looking for theirbaby and there's so many random sounds,
toys going off, it's about impossibleto locate anything. So they weren't able
to. But another interesting thing comefrom this was what it did to the
(23:42):
animals that were there, the horses, the cows. Yeah, they would
just say you could hear shots inthe distance, just some of them couldn't
be saved, but they're so badlyhurt. But it's like just so much
of an impact that you never thinkabout. That's why I thought, like,
this is sad, as tragic ascan be. And kudos to this
(24:03):
community. It sounds like they're strongas hell and they've made a big comeback.
Yeah, but it's it's it's sad, but it's more than anything,
it's scary, like this could happenwhere I'm at in Indiana, this could
happen where you're at. This couldhappen at a lot of places, but
there's just nothing that prepares you forit. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,
(24:25):
I kind of want to go theresometimes just to see what kind of a
community can rebound from something like that. There's obviously some things will never be
replaced for the life and all that, Yeah, you can't ever replace that,
and nothing will ever go back tobeing the exact same. It's just
a new normal now and they're definitelymaking a go over. Though it's important
(24:49):
to note also that there has tobe a learning experience from this because way
too many people died. I mean, that is an abnormal, insane This
was an abnormal and saint storm.But that is a very large amount of
fatalities. Yeah, so you hope, and I'm sure there's a lot of
things that were taken away from this. I watch a lot of air crash
(25:12):
investigators to airplanes. A lot somethingcomes out of every crash, right regulation
of finding. You just hope thatin this particular instance that something would come
out of that because there we talkedto Oklahoma City. They have had several
yeah fives, right, but notthis fatality level typically. I mean,
(25:33):
could be I could be speaking outof my mind. There's some big ones,
but with a twenty minute warning,which is pretty sufficient. However,
it's scary because there's just nothing youcould do. You could drive, hope
you drove the right way. Iguess you could try to drive away fast.
It wasn't a very fast moving storm. It was between forty and ten
miles an hour. You got tothink about it though, that I'm sure,
(25:56):
and I know a lot of othertornado stories the road dude. First
of all, if you're behind theeight ball, you can't get around the
debris. But everybody trying to leaveat the same time as problematic to you
when something like that, there's justno real good answer. Jeff Townsend Media
sees you good night, and thequestion is do I stay here? Will
(26:19):
you be back? Are you gonnacome back? Will you be back?
Are you coming back?
We'll jump back into the Joplin tornado. So we're gonna change it up a
bit this time. We're gonna startoff with the final clip the aftermath of
the storm, and then I'll pickback up and we'll finish off. Sounds
good to me. There are peoplethat are there, got to be answered
right now, Josh, Their peoplefatalities right now, people are trapped,
(00:27):
Josh, that used to be here, they're totally gone. This is bad.
My gosh, this is bad.Oh my gosh. Okay, are
you talking to Kena? What Iwanted to do? Where? I don't
know? Looking around, I don'tknow. Look at that that is destroyed
completely. We're gonna turn around.Oh my gosh, oh oh oh,
(01:11):
you have through that way. Yesee we come in the bullet watch see
why that is gone? Break above? Oh no, my dad, one,
(01:38):
I love. I cannot believe this. The lady out with a broken
back, broadcasting live from the darkenedk d r G twenty four hour Storm
Center. Power is out. Weare running a backup generators at this hour.
I understand whether I got alication thatthe hospitals were in from here,
(02:00):
I'm trying to get to that sideof town. There's just people Joshua done
stobbing hundred. A woman was reportedlyseeing an X ray X rays in her
front yard, and that just givesyou a visual to how far this damage
is reaching. But if you thinkthis is bad, check out this over
here. This is a neighborhood thatis completely flattened by this tornado. There
(02:23):
are dozens of people walking up anddown the street trying to figure out it
through. We have sustained a majordirect hit here in Joplin. Now,
Chad, you've described some damage andwe're trying to understand the situation. And
as we can understand it now,Joplin will never be the same after this
tornadic event. And when I wastwenty fourth and Main, I could look
(02:46):
all the way to the west andall the way to the east, and
I saw no structure stand up andthey're still yeah. I don't recognize where
I'm at right now. I don'ttak a blue lip soon. Don't want
to ride somewhere, dude, Idon't want I don't I don't know if
I want to go here. Idon't know. I don't want to be
(03:08):
somebody can help, don help,thank We have picture all right, here's
the gas station that we were at. We parked right over there. Our
car got blown away. The frontdoor was just right there. The job
(03:35):
of tornado was getting where from ahalf mile to three quarter a mile wide
at its widest point, and wason the ground for about thirteen miles.
Approximately seventy five hundred homes were damaged. Okay, after math and impact of
the jop On tornado. A preliminarysurvey of the tornado damage by the National
Weather Service office in Springfield began onMay twenty third. The following day,
(03:57):
the initial survey confirmed a violent ratedEF four damage. Surveys, however,
found evidence of more intense damage asthe tornado was upgraded to an EF five
with winds between two hundred and twentyfive to two hundred and fifty miles an
hour. This is actually an interestingthing because for some reason, don't I
don't know why, there's a lotof rating disputes on that, and we'll
(04:18):
get to that here a little bit, but this seemed to be a common
thing where the rating if this thingwas actually an EF five or not.
But obviously the damage was crazy.The scope of the damage was immense.
According to a local branch of theAmerican Red Cross. About twenty five percent
of Joplin was destroyed, though emergencyofficials reported some level of damage to about
(04:39):
seventy five percent of the city.A week after the tornado, Joplins mayor
estimated that twenty five percent of thebusinesses licensed in the city were damaged or
destroyed. Nine hundred and sixty fourbuildings were damaged in Joplin, including seven
four hundred and eleven residential buildings andfive hundred and fifty three non residential.
At least thousand, seven hundred andthirty four of those buildings, including three
(05:03):
one hundred and eighty one residential buildingsand all five hundred and fifty three to
none were non residential buildings, sustainedso much damage they were considered destroyed from
an insurance standpoint. According to theFEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency, two hundred
and sixty four homes were impacted andof those, eight hundred and eighty four
(05:26):
were significantly damaged and four thy threehundred and eighty were considered destroyed. So
this is some damage to the infrastructureof Joplin. Tornado also severely damaged critical
infrastructure to the city, hampering emergencyresponse and recovery efforts we talked about the
two of the main three fire stationswere completely destroyed. Two hospitals both had
(05:48):
damaged, one destroyed, and approximatelyfour thousand electrical distribution poles were damaged.
More than one hundred and ten milesof distribution line brought down, one hundred
and thirty five transmission towers affected.All the electrical work in the path was
basically destroyed. Twenty thousand people wereleft without power, and of those home
(06:12):
left without power, they didn't getthe back till about ten to twelve days
later, which is huge. Thecost of rebuilding just the electrical system was
calculated to be about twenty six twentyseven million dollars to the infrastructure of electricity.
The tornado also caused about four thousandleaks and water service lines, dropping
Joplin's water system pressure below operating level. Approximately three thousand, five hundred gas
(06:35):
meters and fight and fifty five thousandfeet of gas maine were damaged, and
it took weeks to get to everygas leak figure out where they're all coming
from. Some damaged mains could notbe shut off because they were serving in
critical facilities like the healthcare systems.The loan remaining hospital and Joplin obviously couldn't
(06:57):
shut everything off because of you needat the hospital. Twenty one cell phone
towers were down and fiber cables damaged. Cellular communications rendered useless, disabling voice
calls and texts. Insurance. Anearly estimate from the catastrophic risk modeling from
Equate placed the insurance losses from thetornado at three billion dollars USD. By
(07:23):
mid June, more than nineteen thousandinsurance claims had been filed, a number
that eventually rose to sixty one thousand, a total payout for more than two
billion dollars, thirty one percent goingto homeowners, five percent to those who
lost vehicles. The impact of theinsurance industry was not so much due to
the number of claims, but thecumulative effect of such a large number of
(07:45):
total losses. In those claims,more than twenty five hundred local people employed
and insurance were involved in some capacity. The two point eight billion dollars in
damage is the largest amount for atornado since nineteen fifty casualties. We talked
about this earlier. The official deathtoll from the National Weather Service listed at
one hundred and fifty eight, whilethe city at Joplin listed at one hundred
(08:07):
and sixty one. Shortly after thetornado, authorities had listed thirteen hundred people
as missing. The number quickly dwindleddown as they were accounted for. Many
people were reported to have been trappedin destroyed houses. Nearly thirty people were
actually rescued the following day after thistornado. That happened at six pm,
(08:28):
so the following day they had beentrapped there the whole day they were rescued.
Of the one hundred and forty sixsets of remains recovered from the rebel,
one hundred and thirty four victims havebeen positively identified, so not even
all identified. This total number includedfour sets of partial remains, some of
which had been longer to the sameperson. A couple weeks later they identified
(08:50):
four more people. Of course,there were people that you know, banished
in this completely infants and terrible thingslike that. The Joplin Globe reported that
fifty four percent of the people killedin that were killed died in the residents,
thirty two percent diet and non residentialareas, and fourteen percent died in
(09:11):
vehicles or outdoors. Job one officialsafter the tornado, announced plans to require
that they submitted this proposal hurricane tiesor other fasteners between houses of their foundations,
something that would cost about seven hundreddollars per house. Officials rejected this
to have these be a requirement inbasements, and they also rejected in a
(09:35):
proposal of having basements being a requirementin new houses. Officials strangely noted that
as of two two thousand and nine, only twenty eight percent of job ones
new homes had basements, compared tothirty eight percent two decades before. But
it's important to note also that alot more population increased and that than the
previous survey. Injuries range from cuts, bruises to impaalments by large debris.
(10:01):
To the conclusion of that oney,five hundred people were injured and or severely
injured enough to seek medical treatment.It also says that they rescued nearly one
thousand pets, with two hundred andninety two almost three hundred homeowners rating dispute.
Like I said, the American Societyof Civil Engineers and the National Weather
(10:22):
Service went back and forwards on ifthis was an EF four EF five.
National Weather Service kind of got thelast gets the last call here. They
do agree with the civil engineers thatat a lot of the damage was equivalent
to EF three e F four throughoutit, But there was certainly things that
happened in several areas, even thoughthey may have been small areas, that
(10:46):
were undeniably EF five if you gooff of the capability of it. Example,
the manhole cover, what was ableto do with impalement? That debate
went down as a EF five onewas all said done, Yeah, okay,
So just to go into that,concrete being removed, manhole covers,
reinforce porches, driveways, asphalt beingripped from the earth, the presence of
(11:11):
wind road structured debris, instances ofvery large vehicles such as buses, vans,
and semi trucks being thrown hundreds ofyards or several blocks from their original
points of origin, the fact thatsome homeowners actually never really relocated their vehicles
again, and the overwhelming extent andtotality the destruction were also put into consideration
to finalize that as any F five. Here's some facts on the cleanup.
(11:35):
The Joplin tornado generated an estimated threemillion cubic yards of debris and amount sufficient
to cover a football field one hundredand twenty stories high. Removal efforts lasted
for months, and at their height, more than four hundred and ten trucks
a day were removing debris to landfillsand Joplin as well as nearby counties.
The tornado also led to a renewedlead contamination on many of Joplin's properties.
(12:01):
Because if you remember, we wentback to the beginning the story, that's
what this area was founded on leadand development of that. So the reason
it was able to kind of leadto this reoccurring of lead contamination here is
because there's a lot of ruminiscce ofthis and underground trees, foundations, stuff
like that, and it was actuallyuprooted, and they found about forty percent
(12:26):
of the yards and southern Joplin hadbeen contaminated. Chunks of raw lead were
in some places. They were sittingaround the size of tennis balls or golf
balls. The city spent more thanfive million just to clean up this lead
contamination. They had to get grantsto do so. Basically they had to
handle this seriously, removing the lead, cleaning the topsoil, putting new top
(12:48):
soil down, and of course theyhad to pass requirements before, like anything
that could be rebuilt had to betested before it could be. FEMA maintained
a large presence after this following thetornado, with as many as eight hundred
and twenty employees working in the city. The city warned by federal officials that
it should expect to lose twenty fivepercent of its population following the tornado.
(13:11):
They actually responded pretty quickly, though, and built an average of five houses
a week between twenty eleven and twentytwenty two. Most businesses reopen and more
than three hundred new businesses opened betweenthese last was it twelve years? And
here's the last interesting fact here.There was some conversation about the mental health
(13:31):
impact that it had. There weretwenty people they said, committed suicide and
the wake of this and obviously hada big impact on the mental health for
the residents for quite a while,and I'm sure to this day it's not
something that you know, goes away. Calls about domestic violence grew for the
(13:52):
less next several years, much higherthan they were post this tornado. That's
rough, really bad. Yeah,everybody's standing. They need of storms shelter
after that. Yeah, Yeah,that was a lot of debris. They
said, how many football field highone hundred and twenty stories high, one
hundred yards wide, hundred and twentystories high. This doesn't even make sense,
(14:16):
no, But but when you lookat the video that we watched,
you can see how it would easilybe that. Now. I would do
want to talk about that video alittle bit because it did a good job
of grasping severity of the situation.So the person a couple people, but
one comment really stood out to mesaid, I don't even know where I'm
at. Yeah. Now, soimagine you went outside right now and everything
(14:37):
was just wiped out right, youwouldn't know where you're at. There's no
street signs, there's no structures standingright, How would you know where you're
actually at? Yeah? That's thatis crazy. One thing you were talking
about there was they thought about passinglike the requirement to have hurricane ties to
(14:58):
prevent debris and stuff like that,and it'd be like seven hundred dollars per
building. When you said that,I was like, man, hurri getting
ties it? What those are?What? I looked it up while you're
reading. I bought these things formy SHD for the rafters. They're a
bucket piece. Yeah, I don'tknow, it says to the foundation.
I don't know what all that consistsof. They're they're for you could use
(15:22):
it for like basically everything, butbasically tying it in a certain way to
something else to just prevent it fromflying off. And yeah, it ties
like the floor joists to the foundationor the rafters to the Yeah frame,
how how cheap can you be too? You know, well to not They
(15:43):
try to also go as extreme andyou can call it extreme or not extreme
as to make it where you hadto have a basement in any new house
that didn't get passed. I'm notsurprised. That's a pretty that's a significant
increase, but makes you see whyin Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, they have
much more strict requirements on building codesand much higher rate of shelters. What
(16:07):
did it so? Interesting enough?Here also the number of basements being put
in new homes that actually decreased fromthe two decades prior. What do you
think that is? When I lookedat it, I thought it was probably
because a pretty booming population, sobuilding a lot of homes just didn't put
basements in them. Yeah, huh, she's so much sunpacked there. It's
(16:30):
just weird that you know they wouldn't. There are some things that are makes
sense to add in, and somethinglike hurricane ties cheap add for future buildings
that should have been a requirement.After that, you talk about how this
compares to hurricane that's like it's likeeighty ninety mile an hour. No,
no, but okay, so there'snothing with that powerful in the world as
(16:53):
a tornado that we just talked about, Well, it's the equivalent of a
bomb, atomic bomb. But theproblem with the hurricane is its sustain winds
can last twenty four hours, canlast twelve hours, yeah, which makes
it very deadly, right, youknow what I mean, that countless surge,
(17:14):
right, yeah, yeah, butthis event is quick, this tornado
when tornado happens. But I thinkthis is so scary to me because you're
really powerless. You can do.You can get these hurricane ties and stuff,
but from the way it looked atsome of these neighborhoods, they're just
all wiped out. Yeah no,yeah, there was no stop in that.
(17:40):
I think the idea is to preventflying debris exactly. No, you're
right, because that's becomes the mostdangerous thing yeah, and they talked about
all the different number of people thatwent to the hospital with impalement. And
when I was editing a lot ofthis footage, there was a nurse talking
about some of the different things shesaw that we're stuck in people. Is
terrifying. Can't imagine just from thewind, different vibe tonight on your scary
(18:07):
stories. But yeah, a trulyterrifying story. And I have never been
seen a tornado. You've never beenin one? What did you say?
You say you've never been in one. I've never actually seen one either.
I've been about four miles away fromone when I was in southern Indiana,
but I didn't see it, andit was F one or two. It
was not like this. Obviously,there was this one time. I'm not
(18:30):
harm so certain it was a tornado. It probably wasn't. They never officially
said it was. But I wasin the restaurant and the roof got peeled
off the top, and I doknow for a fact that I felt like
the windows were going to explode atone point, and so like it may
(18:52):
have just been a straight line windthat was this out of control, yeah,
or it was like a lolo ortornado that touched down for a split
second and then ripped it off andwent away. But yeah, this like
this is like what we just sawwas like hand of God level. Uh
yeah, how many miles? Howlong was this thing? Cach It said
(19:17):
it was touchdown in a mile widefor about sixteen miles of going across you
said earlier it was going at tenmiles an hour. At one point it
is going ten miles an hour wasjust slow. So that was like almost
an hour or something like that thatit was going through that area. Yeah,
(19:38):
so that okay, So aerial surveyswhen you go back and they showed
that they're at the end of thevideo, are insane, A drone,
helicopter, whatever you want to lookat it with. Yeah, twenty one
miles long and up to a milewide. This thing stayed on the ground
for twenty one miles and we actually, you go back to earlier, the
(19:59):
first part of this, you actuallygot to see it develop on camera,
which, yeah, I don't wantto say was pretty cool. But it
went from a tiny It went fromlike a normal tornado to this, like
you said, an act of God, this monster in seconds. Yeah,
that was ridiculous. Yeah, I'veseen some footage before, but I never
saw all that like aftermath or anythinglike that, or even like the during
(20:23):
of it. And so some ofthat photage there was just absolutely terrifying to
look at and just it makes youwhat you feel bad watching it, but
it also makes you count your blessingsthat you've done. You're not if you're
not there. Yeah, a lotof people said that they referred to what
the scene that they saw as peoplewalking like zombies down the street with very
(20:47):
like a few possessions they found.I could see that. What did you
think about the infrastructure? How itmentioned that That's something I guess you don't
typically think about right when you thinkit, right, all those gas lines
and everything that are ruptured and everythingwater, gas and electrical. It just
decimated the electrical infrastructure in that town. I mean this stuff one hundred and
ten miles of distribution power line.Yeah, stuff like that takes forever roof
(21:10):
fix you, uh, And sothat being destroyed that also slows down the
repairs, right, because if youdon't have access to power to do things,
you can't fix things. No.Today, there was a lot of
people on the when I researched thisthat were talking about how they were trying
to get they were out of townand they were trying to get back home
(21:33):
into Joplin after this one. Theydidn't know where they're at. There's no
street signs, and that's something youkind of take for granted when you don't
have anything to reference. And twothere was so much debris. Couldn't even
get to your house. Yeah,they people talked about parking half a mile
away and walking there. You don'teven know what you're out walk to.
(21:53):
Like, well, in that onereference that guy said when he looked in
two different directions, is nothing.Yeah, all. And then they showed
that neighborhood outside of the hospital gonegone. It's like there's nothing to go
back to, it's gone. Andthat is insanity to me. It's like
(22:15):
you think about it's like what wouldyou even do? Like can you process?
That's why I'm not surprised at thelike they said, the increase in
suicides and stuff like that. Yeah, stuff like that takes a toll on
human human beings that is just hardto quantify. And it's like being at
war. It's like you said,a bomb. Yeah, that's why everybody
(22:37):
kept saying, it's like a bombdestroyed everything. There was a there was
a what did you think about thepizza hut manager that was killed? That's
terrify you can see, like tryingto get everybody into a safe place.
That was actually a really sad part. I was thinking about that. I
was thinking about, you know,walkings that've been in and it's like they're
(22:57):
a pretty structurally Usually they're a goodplace to put the girl. They have
wall there in the middle of theplace. Yeah, I mean yeah,
but there they are so big andso like, you know, you try
to save everybody and you're not gonnahave that kind of room. Yeah.
No, I've never seen a walkin that could fit the amount of people
he was trying to put in there. One story I heard and I didn't
(23:21):
I didn't play it. Sure,it is incredibly sad, You're sad stories
tonight was they were looking for theirbaby and there's so many random sounds,
toys going off, it's about impossibleto locate anything. So they weren't able
to. But another interesting thing comefrom this was what it did to the
(23:42):
animals that were there, the horses, the cows. Yeah, they would
just say you could hear shots inthe distance, just some of them couldn't
be saved, but they're so badlyhurt. But it's like just so much
of an impact that you never thinkabout. That's why I thought, like,
this is sad, as tragic ascan be. And kudos to this
(24:03):
community. It sounds like they're strongas hell and they've made a big comeback.
Yeah, but it's it's it's sad, but it's more than anything,
it's scary, like this could happenwhere I'm at in Indiana, this could
happen where you're at. This couldhappen at a lot of places, but
there's just nothing that prepares you forit. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,
(24:25):
I kind of want to go theresometimes just to see what kind of a
community can rebound from something like that. There's obviously some things will never be
replaced for the life and all that, Yeah, you can't ever replace that,
and nothing will ever go back tobeing the exact same. It's just
a new normal now and they're definitelymaking a go over. Though it's important
(24:49):
to note also that there has tobe a learning experience from this because way
too many people died. I mean, that is an abnormal, insane This
was an abnormal and saint storm.But that is a very large amount of
fatalities. Yeah, so you hope, and I'm sure there's a lot of
things that were taken away from this. I watch a lot of air crash
(25:12):
investigators to airplanes. A lot somethingcomes out of every crash, right regulation
of finding. You just hope thatin this particular instance that something would come
out of that because there we talkedto Oklahoma City. They have had several
yeah fives, right, but notthis fatality level typically. I mean,
(25:33):
could be I could be speaking outof my mind. There's some big ones,
but with a twenty minute warning,which is pretty sufficient. However,
it's scary because there's just nothing youcould do. You could drive, hope
you drove the right way. Iguess you could try to drive away fast.
It wasn't a very fast moving storm. It was between forty and ten
miles an hour. You got tothink about it though, that I'm sure,
(25:56):
and I know a lot of othertornado stories the road dude. First
of all, if you're behind theeight ball, you can't get around the
debris. But everybody trying to leaveat the same time as problematic to you
when something like that, there's justno real good answer. Jeff Townsend Media
sees you good night, and thequestion is do I stay here? Will
(26:19):
you be back? Are you gonnacome back? Will you be back?
Are you coming back?
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