10 years ago this week, a massive E
F5 tornado changed Joplin MO forever.
It killed 161 people,
injured more than 1000,
and did nearly $3 billion in damage.
It was the deadliest US tornado in
decades and did the most damage in
dollars ever in this country are Casey.
Nolan was one of the first reporters
on the scene in May of 2011 and
tonight he's back in Joplin.
Or he found a town transformed
and still Woon did.
Casey joins us live from Joplin.
Yeah Mike, when you pull into town it
is easy to see the progress here in
new public buildings, new businesses,
entire neighborhoods that are new,
but it also doesn't take long to see that
there is still healing here that well,
it may never be finished. It was
a mile wide and 13 miles long,
right through the heart of Joplin,
wiping out nearly everything
in its path,
leaving behind a pain of loss.
Maybe too deep to ever really know.
I'm down here looking to see if maybe.
My friend might have taken cover.
It was a pillow.
On top down here too.
So I was hoping that maybe she
grabbed a pillow and taking
cover a slow moving tornado with
record breaking winds in its
rotation and EF5 in May of 2011
that change Joplin forever.
We had 500 businesses that were destroyed,
thousands of homes that were destroyed.
Multiple thousands of people
were displaced and so try to
put the devastation in context.
I won't do it justice,
it was just so severe.
10 years later, there are still
scars from the storm and signs of
a town rising from it felt never
ending for awhile. And now it's just wild to
drive down roads and not
remember what was there.
We first met Mariah Stone
when she was going into her
senior year in high school,
just after the tornado.
Her family and most of
their home were spared.
They spent the next several months
after the tornado rebuilding
their home after school and jobs
and the stress of surviving.
I feel bad like
I didn't lose as much as others,
but I care about him like
I think about him and like.
I know she lost her mom and.
My neighbor, if I could go
back then I wish it would have
never happened for everyone,
but I think that there has been
some good that you can look
that has came out of it. And.
So I think we're much stronger than we
were before. If strength can be
measured in the way Joplin has
kept its commitment to rebuild,
then you only have to look at
how the path of the tornado
has transformed over the past
decade to understand why.
Many here believe
the city has built back better to me it
brought the whole community together
within hours of the Tornado,
Crossland construction volunteered
its cranes to move debris in the
10 years since the company has
been part of Joplin's more than
$2 billion construction boom.
Joplin proper is exploding.
Not all of that is rebuilding
from the tornado. I know no,
it is not. But I look at it as a continuance.
I look at it as Joplin's way insane.
You can't hold us back.
You can't stop us where Joplin's
High School was destroyed.
A world class campus now
stands where it once was.
Hard to see an end to the rubble.
Joplin has now averaged 5 new
homes a week for the past decade.
While other changes have been smaller
and even bigger at the same time,
yes a lot in the best way ever.
Mariah is now a wife and mother living in
a new home built in the Tornado's path.
As we say, I'm glad that I lived.
I am I've gotta send in law and
a grandson and. So I'm glad
that we were not one of the 169.
A lot of people. A
lot of people
attribute a few deaths in the days
after the tornado to the tornado.
The official number is 161
lives lossed back in 2011.
One thing everyone we talked to
so agrees on whether the mayor,
the contractor,
the family we spoke with is that they
haven't made this progress on their own.
They all say they are grateful if not
amazed at the number of volunteers
and the work that volunteers
have done here over the years.
Just one small example Mike,
it was a Saint Louis company
that originally saw that story.
With Marias family and the work
they were doing on their roof,
reached out,
gave him all the materials for
free to finish it, Mike.
People really did step up and I'm
here in the weather center with
Chief meteorologist Scott Connell.
He's taking a look back at how
that tornado developed and
the destructive path it took.
It seems like only
yesterday you know,
it really doesn't seem that long ago,
and that was a really rough
stretch of about a week or so.
Of course, we were preceded by the Good
Friday tornado that happened earlier in
April in Saint Louis on Good Friday,
of course, but this time frame here from
May 22nd all the way up to May 27th.
It was an incredible time with seven.
6 or 7 E F5 tornadoes. Very rare.
This is what the radar operators
were looking at initially.
Watching a supercell thunderstorm
which is already rotating the
rotation is there and as the storm
merged with another thunderstorm,
that rotation got even stronger.
Now at this point that stronger circulation
we switched the radars over to Springfield.
You can see the tornado beginning to touch
down here and it becomes a very strong,
very violent tornado and you start
to see what we call the debris ball.
In the radar signature,
we have newer technology that allows
us to see more inside of the storm than
what we could see back in those days,
but this storm was a massive storm that
went not only the 13 miles through Joplin,
but continued to go an additional
9 miles or so off to the East and
southeast before it finally dissipate it.
You look back three of the top ten
deadliest tornadoes in the US have
struck Missouri and or Illinois,
the deadliest storm in U.S.
history was the Tri State tornado.
It's also the longest path in a
continuous tornado on the ground
of 219 miles.
It started down in Reynolds
County and went over into Indiana.
695.
People died in that storm,
the third deadliest tornado in Saint
Louis went across Lafayette Park,
went across and struck the EADS
Bridge and into East Saint Louis.
225 people died there and in modern
times when we have our warnings in place
and we are able to give you warnings.
We still had 161 people Lossed in Joplin.
That's why we do what we do and why
when we tell you to go to the basement,
we really need you to be prepared.
Now is the time to prepare when
the weather is fairly quiet, Mike.