Joplin remains example for healthcare emergency response 15 years after EF-5 tornado
JOPLIN, Mo. (KMIZ)
Friday marks 15 years since a deadly, rain-wrapped tornado plowed into the city of Joplin, killing 161 people and leveling hundreds of homes and businesses.
The tornado touched down shortly after 5:30 p.m. as many people were out doing their weekend shopping, or attending Joplin High School graduation at Missouri Southern State.
The storm rapidly gained strength after touching down, reaching EF-4 to EF-5 strength in less than 10 minutes, right as it approached St. John's Regional Medical Center.
The tornado slammed into the building, filled with around 180 patients and even more healthcare workers. The roof gave way, windows exploded, and stairwells crumbled, making escape difficult.
Six people were killed inside the hospital, but the emergency medical response didn't stop despite the hospital being destroyed. A M.A.S.H.-style tent hospital was quickly constructed on the hospital parking lot within a week of the tornado, with a component hospital brought in by Mercy Health System soon after.
I took a tour of the new Mercy Joplin that opened 10 years ago. The lessons learned from the storm set the standard for how hospitals are built to withstand natural disasters.
I spoke with Charis Trost, executive director of planning and design with Mercy Health System. Her team was on the ground within hours of the tornado.
"All eyes of the country were looking at us to see how we would construct a brand new hospital with the mindset of making it safe for our caregivers and for our patients, because that was a huge thing, especially for the caregivers. Wanting to feel safe in the aftermath," Trost said.
Trost said it typically takes about 3 to 6 years to construct a hospital tower from the ground up, let alone an entire campus. It was important to find a piece of land large enough for growth, but also highly visible for those in the community and traveling through the region. They settled for a location right along I-44 on the south side of town.
Hardening the new hospital was a top priority, as the central utilities were completely dismantled, and the roof collapsed, allowing large debris to land in the building.
"The biggest goal when they built this hospital was being able to treat patients during the storm rather than worrying about evacuating. You can’t treat patients when you don’t have power, they learned that the hard way," said Chris Butler, regional director of facilities maintenance.
"One of the big things when you look back that they wanted to do was get the power control center lower than the hospital, so even if a tornado came across, the entire power center is set down at the bottom of the hill," said Butler.
All of the hospital's utilities are buried a few hundred feet away from the hospital with three of four walls surrounded by a berm, all accessed by an underground tunnel.
“This hospital now has two power feeds, from different substations that are separated across town, so if a storm were to come through and take out power say on the north side of town, we still have power coming from the south," said Butler.
All the windows in patient rooms are rated EF-2 to EF-3, while the ICU and NICU windows can withstand up to 250 mph winds. The are no windows in the stairwells, and the roof is made of 13" of reinforced concrete.
"We had air conditioning units blow off the roof. We had cars in the building. We had air conditioning units on top of cars, so nothing is on the roof now," said Butler.
Still, some reminders of St. John's remain, from the stained glass from the old chapel ingrained in the floors, to the nearly unscathed stations of the cross now with a new home in the new chapel.
"It’s just something that’s powerful for me, personally. You can look, like I said, there are some imperfections in it, and there are some imperfections in it. I don’t believe that is supposed to be there. There’s a chunk missing from the top, I’m not tall enough to see it. I really wish I could explain how it was salvaged and still in one piece," said Butler.
It takes about ten years to get a new building code established for new construction of healthcare facilities. Research following the Joplin tornado was adopted into the international building code in 2024, mandating that all new hospitals must withstand an EF-2 tornado.
