AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
![]() The storm blew out hundreds of windows and caused damage so extensive that doctors had to abandon the hospital soon after the twister passed. Six people died there, five of them patients, plus one visitor. John's Regional Medical Center, where staff had only moments to hustle their patients into the hallway. Some of the most startling damage was at St. At times, it was three-quarters of a mile wide. Hayes said the storm had winds of 190 to 198 mph. National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes said the storm was given a preliminary label as an EF4 - the second-highest rating assigned to twisters based on the damage they cause. The groups went door to door, making quick checks of property that in many places had been stripped to their foundations or had walls collapse. Teams of searchers fanned out in waves across several square miles. Fires, gas fumes and unstable buildings posed constant threats. Rescue crews had to move gingerly around downed power lines and jagged chunks of debris as they hunted for victims and hoped for survivors. "By the time we tried to get under the house, it already went over us."Īs rescuers toiled in the debris, a strong thunderstorm lashed the crippled city. "Five minutes later, the second warning went off," he said. Larry Bruffy said he heard the first warning but looked out from his garage and saw nothing. While many residents had up to 17 minutes of warning, rain and hail may have drowned out the sirens. Seventeen people were pulled alive from the rubble. But he said: "Clearly, it's on its way up." Jay Nixon told The Associated Press he did not want to guess how high the death toll would eventually climb. That storm also killed 116, according to the National Weather Service.Īuthorities were prepared to find more bodies in the rubble throughout this gritty, blue-collar town of 50,000 people about 160 miles south of Kansas City. Not since a June 1953 tornado in Flint, Mich., had a single twister been so deadly. Unlike the multiple storms that killed more than 300 people last month across the South, Joplin was smashed by just one exceptionally powerful tornado. "I've never seen such devastation - just block upon block upon block of homes just completely gone," said former state legislator Gary Burton who showed up to help at a volunteer center at Missouri Southern State University. Fires from gas leaks burned across town, and more violent weather loomed, including the threat of hail, high winds and even more tornadoes.Īt daybreak, the city's south side emerged from darkness as a barren, smoky wasteland. ![]() It was the nation's deadliest single twister in nearly 60 years and the second major tornado disaster in less than a month.Īuthorities feared the toll could rise as the full scope of the destruction comes into view: house after house reduced to slabs, cars crushed like soda cans, shaken residents roaming streets in search of missing family members. Rescue crews dug through piles of splintered houses and crushed cars Monday in a search for victims of a half-mile-wide tornado that killed at least 116 people when it blasted much of this Missouri town off the map and slammed straight into its hospital. A large tornado moved through much of the city Sunday, damaging a hospital and hundreds of homes and businesses and killing at least 116 people. ![]() Anita Stokes on Monday surveys her home that was destroyed by a tornado in Joplin, Mo. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |