Joplin tornado

Journey and her friend Isabella discuss the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri in 2011. Isabella's family was affected, and she recalls the destruction and the 200 mph winds. Isabella's uncle, a firefighter, had a traumatic experience during the recovery and had to go to therapy. They discuss the rebuilding efforts and the cost of rebuilding homes. Isabella has visited Joplin since the tornado and notes that while the city looks better, there are still vacant buildings. They talk about the difficulty of preparing for a tornado in schools and the loss of belongings and memories. They express empathy for the parents who lost their children in the tornado. They mention an urban legend about Cherokee County being protected from storms. Hi, my name is Journey Rector and I am doing my podcast on the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri in 2011. I am doing this podcast with one of my very good friends that had family that lived in Joplin whenever this tornado struck. First, I'm going to ask Isabella just a couple questions since she did live in Missouri at the time, not in Joplin, but she remembers being so close and getting the phone call from her family that did live there. We'll just talk about this before we talk about the civilians that experienced this travesty and all the civilizations that were destroyed by it. So, what do you remember from the day? So, I obviously was nine so I don't really remember things in an adult perspective, but I do remember the phone call that my mom got from her sister who lived in Joplin at the time and their house was completely destroyed. Most of their objects and furniture, safe keepings, all of those things were also destroyed. The wind, I believe I remember her saying, was like 200 miles per hour. So, I mean, it wiped it out and it wiped it out really fast. And I just remember driving down there and seeing how horrible the town looked and, you know, a place I would like going to to spend time with my cousins turned into an absolute nightmare. So, I know you guys lived in Salem at the time whenever the tornado struck. Did it ever, how close did it ever get to you or did you feel any of the aftermath that was caused from that? So, I didn't feel any of the aftermath then. It didn't come to Salem like it did Joplin. I do remember the storms were really bad that day, but it was mainly just a mild thunderstorm where I was at not nearly as bad as what it was in Joplin. So, we read on weather.gov on their Joplin tornado PDF file that it was actually one of the deadliest tornadoes that struck the United States because it directly killed 158 people and actually ended up injuring over 1,000. And Isabella, just like you stated earlier, it actually had winds over 200 miles per hour, which is strong enough winds to destroy any building that's not structurally secure. Now, Isabella, I actually remember you telling me that your uncle had a very big role in the recovery of the Joplin tornado, but I'm not really sure of the details. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. So, my uncle was actually a firefighter in Joplin. He was very passionate about his job, loved his job. You would never hear him not talking about how much he was glad he chose being a fireman as his career. After the tornado, however, really changed his perspective on his career because of all of the things he got to see when he was trying to help other people and save people. He actually found a woman who had been under shelter with her dog, and he found her and she was barely conscious, very bruised up. It was a traumatic experience for him, and I remember him having to go to therapy for a long time after that to want to go back to work and continue his career as a fireman. Do you think that's had any permanent effects on how he lived his life? Oh, absolutely. I genuinely think he will never be the same after all the things that he saw. I mean, you have to think that you live in a town that's pretty much super nice, and they were starting to establish new businesses there and lots of chain restaurants and stuff, and then this struck, and so that ended. So, since you brought up the fact on rebuilding the buildings and the homes there, I actually read on theguardian.com on there how Joplin was rebuilt after a Tornado Devastation article that it costed a lot of money. For 180 homes just to be built, it was around $1.6 billion, but thanks to 1.5 million hours of volunteer service, Joplin is rebuilt now. I've never been to Joplin, and I know that you said you went after the Tornado stroke, but have you been since it's been supposedly rebuilt? Oh, yes. It is significantly better than it was in 2011. I mean, it's significantly better than it was even in 2016, but it is still one of those towns that you can tell was hit by a natural disaster just because there are still so many buildings that are vacant and so many homes that are basically broken homes and will be forever. A lot of it is brand new, and the city does look very nice nowadays, but where I remember going to eat restaurants and stuff like that, all of that is still very vacant, and those buildings are just sitting there. I just only hope that the money that they used for those 181 homes was used for more structural materials than what was used before. That would withstand winds hopefully like this if it was to ever strike again. I definitely think that it will, and I definitely think that they do take into consideration how horrible the Tornado affected just the town all in all. There was actually several schools within the district that were destroyed. I'm pretty sure within that number that we had spoke about earlier with how many people had passed away, that that included children as well. According to ABC News, out of that 158, 13 of them were actually children in that situation, but it doesn't necessarily specify on if those 13 were in school when the Tornado struck or if it was just 13 children in general. Do you ever remember hearing about the specifics on who was killed, or was it a slow process over time as they found the bodies? I think that it was a little bit of both. I don't know if school was in session then. My cousins are much older, and I just don't remember them telling me about being in school, but that doesn't mean that they weren't. I think that they did end up discovering a lot more bodies as time went on because of the debris and all of the hiding spots for just everything because the town was completely demolished, and it was unrecognizable, so it was hard. One thing, even from us going to school, and I'm sure almost every school's protocol, even the school that I work in today, it's very hard to prepare for a tornado in a school building. One, because most of them are so old. They lack the structure they once had before, and sometimes just getting under a desk or putting your head down in the hallway is not going to protect you from an EF5 tornado with 200 mile-per-hour winds that struck Joplin, Missouri in 2011. You can never prepare for a natural disaster to strike like this, and the amount of people that lost things that they will never get back, either it was things they kept from a lost loved one or their children's keepsakes, the family dog, all these things they weren't able to take with them when they were just trying to escape as fast as possible. I remember lots of pictures. Everybody's pictures were just in piles and piles, and nobody could figure out what belonged to who, and I know that if I were to lose all of my family pictures or baby pictures, I would be devastated. Well, like I said previously, you can't prepare for anything like this, and most people, you can get insurance on your home and have that rebuilt, but on memories and lifelong belongings, those are something that you are never going to be able to get back, and then there are some people where that's all they have to live for, and they never evacuated their home, and those are some of the people that died within the tornado. Absolutely. Memorabilia isn't necessarily a necessity, but it is a part of a lot of people's lives, and my family personally has always been the kind of people who keep certain things that they hold dear to them because of the memories that those things created. And how we talked about earlier, the children that did die, I have a lot of empathy in my heart for the parents that if their children were at school and they weren't able to be with them in those moments, and that's so scary to think about not being with your child, and that's one thing I think about with my daughter. Thankfully, she's right up the hallway with me, so we're in the same building, so I wouldn't be able to run to her in a situation like that. But not everybody is as lucky as me, and I couldn't imagine the fear of a child having to go through that without their parents. Absolutely not. Just thinking about something like this, something we can't control as human beings on Earth, we cannot control the natural disasters that occur out of nowhere, really, and a lot of it is out of our hands, and I just find it super unfair that there are parents out there that did lose their kids that day. Have you ever heard, you know, growing up we've been told that we've lived in Tornado Alley, but I personally have never seen a tornado living here, and I've lived in Taos all my whole life, but have you ever heard about the urban legend that an old medicine man put a blessing on Cherokee County that it's in the shape of a bowl to where we cannot be hit by any massive storms? I have heard that, and I'm going to be real honest with you, I've always wanted to believe that just because I know how horrible tornadoes really can be and the damage that they have the capability of. There's several that have just passed us by, like there was a tornado in Pegs three or four years ago that had struck and had torn down quite a few buildings, and we didn't even really feel the wind. No, yeah, I just, you know, every time that I see that there's a tornado warning or a watch or even just a thunderstorm warning or watch, I'm always on edge about it just because I know from experience and have seen, you know, what happened in the Joplin tornado, I could never imagine that happening to Tahlequah or anywhere near Tahlequah just because this is where I call home, so I can't imagine what people went through that day. I, you know, I have a cousin that's in the military. She was just about to graduate high school whenever the tornado struck, and she wanted to volunteer to help so bad and so she decided to join the military so that she could help any other kind of cleanup from a disaster like this that happened. And the hurricane that actually struck Texas a few years ago, she was there for several months to help the cleanup process there as well, so I think it's really interesting how even if you don't live in Joplin, Missouri, just hearing about it can impact you in a way to make you want to help others, seeing the lack of help that these people received, because you think it's never going to happen to you, and then it does, and then all you can do is rely on the community and the people around to get you through. Absolutely, and I do think that, you know, natural disasters like this can really bring a community together more than anything else can, and I do believe that it's important for there to be a lot of people who are selfless in a situation like that who can, if they have the means or the resources to help other people, I think that it's very important that they go out of their way to help others that are in need, because you have to think, in a situation like that, a lot of people's jobs were probably destroyed, and their homes were absolutely destroyed, and so when something like that happens, you are potentially homeless, or you are potentially jobless, and without money or shelter, you're kind of in a tricky spot. Yeah, it completely flips your life. It does. And that's one thing that human comfort is relying on is routine. No matter who you are, when your routine gets shaken up to where it is completely out of proportion, then that's going to ultimately flip your life upside down, and you feel like some of these people had to start from scratch. They lost their vehicle, lost all their belongings, lost their home, lost their jobs because their job was destroyed, and then some of those people didn't have job security. Jobs were rebuilt. They didn't just get their jobs back. And there's a whole generation of people out there, and typically it's the older generation who don't rely on banks, so if their homes are hit like the tornado hit Joplin, and they keep all of their money in a safe keep in their home, that could have potentially been wiped out as well, and then you are back to square one with your whole life savings in a box somewhere because you don't, you know, there's really people out there that do not rely on banks. They probably lost everything that day, not just their homes or their jobs or, you know, family members or anything, literally their money, their everything. Unfortunately, not only was it homes and people's livelihoods and even their own well-being that was taken during the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, but also there was a great concern for the earth below us, you know, our foundation that everything is built upon. I mean, there was worries of soil erosion, water pollution, and flooding risk contamination. Whenever you have a tornado, I mean, it destroys everything. That's destroying factories. There was a type of a pneumonia leak that had to be sealed from it leaking due to flood risking. There is just so many chemicals used and even just building homes when they're destroyed and you get that wet, it all flows around. All the gas stations that were destroyed, the pumps and the gas being ripped out of the ground, those are leading into main waterways that are going to affect the wildlife as well, the animals that drink out of the water, the fish that swim in the water. You think that it only affects just the surface, but really it goes so much deeper when you experience a natural hazard like this. It absolutely does because, like you mentioned, when you have a disaster like this, it rips everything apart, like just the entire town, the environment, the everything, and there's just not a lot you can do to fix those types of things except to get it together as a community and try and figure out what you can do to make the water healthy again, to make a stronger base for new homes and infrastructures and things like that. EarthTimes.org has a lot that talks about the aftermath of the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, but the aftermath of tornadoes in general. That's where it was stated the pneumonia leak was and the concerns for all the other elements that could affect the earth. It's very interesting to see how almost ignorant some people are to how much the weather affects everybody's daily life around them. Absolutely. And how, again, the younger generation that is destroying the earth as we know it, some of them probably have no idea about the tornado that stuck Joplin, where for me, that was one of the first natural disasters I had ever experienced. That's why I wanted to do this podcast that has my interest in it because living in Tornado Alley, never seeing a tornado, and then seeing a place relatively close to me be absolutely demolished was life-changing for me. Absolutely, and it is really important to educate people about these kinds of things because, like I mentioned earlier, there's just not a lot of control we have over this kind of thing. Tornadoes are going to happen. Tsunamis are going to happen. Hurricanes are going to happen. That's just a part of life. It's important to teach people the possibilities, not to scare them, but just so that they are educated in the aspects they know what to do if it were to happen to them. If we continue to be scared to educate people on certain things, then history is ultimately going to repeat itself. Absolutely. We are going to continue to not focus the community's money on buildings that are going to be reliant, and we're going to continue to focus it on aesthetics. I see a lot of homes being built today, and even some of the homes that were rebuilt in Joplin, Missouri, that do not look like they would withstand a 200-mile-per-hour tornado. I know we had spoken about this previously, but I still feel like we're going in somewhat of a right direction, but I think that there is definitely a different path that could be taken with more focus on this not happening as severe as it did again. Exactly. Something that's worth mentioning is where we live, there are a lot of mobile homes and mobile parks where people live, or you have people who we live really close to the river. They want to live in an RV. They want to live somewhere where they can move their home anytime they wanted to. That kind of housing can be safe and can be livable, but when you think about a situation like this, what will you do when your house could potentially be just ripped off the ground? Because there's nothing holding it down. Exactly. I understand that mobile homes can be such nice homes to live in, and they are very equipped to house a family and house people for years and years. But that is something I think about, though, with tornadoes, is those are one of the main houses that could just be ripped from the ground, no questions asked. For the people that are homeless, it's stated on Lund.org on their article on how tornadoes may be affecting their air quality, that when pipelines are destroyed and other chemical containers like we had talked about earlier, that completely pollutes the air pollution. And low air quality affects climate change as well, which is a big deal. And for homeless people that don't live anywhere, even if they are safe from this tornado, they are not safe from the aftermath. They're not safe from the water quality and from the air quality. It takes longer for the natural elements to rebuild itself than anything man-made. Absolutely. And then you also have to think about all those toxic chemicals and the pollution that occurs. You could live somewhere where they plant corn or they plant basically just anything you can think of, but the ground and the water and the soil can affect that. So not only is it affecting the air we breathe or the water that we drink, it could also potentially affect the food that we eat. And there are many things where it affects the food that they eat. I know there is a lot of farms in Missouri and also a lot of powered windmills as well. Absolutely. And I did not do much research before this on if there was really any in Joplin that was affected by that, but I imagine that there was just because of the layout of the land that's up there. I mean, it's the plains. So I know farmers lost tons of money. It takes a long time to regrow crops that you've had growing for years. Absolutely. And that you've worked years to build towards. So it destroyed, like we've talked about so many times already, so many people's livelihoods that even though this happened in 2011 and it's now almost 2024, their lives will never be rebuilt and they will never have the stability that they had before. Absolutely. And they're still trying to build up where they live from the ground up, literally. And I know that it happened years ago, but I've seen it firsthand. They are still struggling to get Joplin back to the way that it once was. And don't get me wrong, it looks great and they're doing a wonderful job, but it just will always be known in a way for what happened there. I hope that in my lifetime we both will be able to see Joplin in its form that it was meant to be and like the tornado had never struck. But in the meantime, thank you for doing this podcast with me today. And I just have to say that I'm very grateful that I've not experienced anything like this and I hope that I never do. Absolutely, and me as well. Thank you.