Rebuilding Joplin: Five Years Later

Five years after a massive tornado touched down in Joplin, the city continues to rebuild and recover.

On May 22, 2011, an EF5 tornado touched down in the city and quickly worked its way through leaving miles of destruction in it’s path.

“When we looked outside our neighborhood was completely flat,” said Liz Easton, a lifetime Joplin resident and tornado survivor. “That is a very strange feeling when you think everyone else is gone.”

Easton and her family found protection in the basement of their home.

“We were actually sucked up a little, levitated downstairs in our basement. It was quite frightening.”

But unlike the Eastons, 161 people lost their lives as the storm rolled through.

Keith Stammer, Joplin’s Emergency Management Director, said it took just 20 minutes for the tornado to travel six miles and rip apart several blocks along Main Street.

“When you lose a third of your city, a strip six miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, one of the first things you want to ask yourself is what does recovery mean?”

Mayor Michael Seibert said the first thing the city had to do was clear away more than 3 million cubic feet of debris, which took nearly three months.

“The overall impact of the disaster was just incredibly overwhelming,” he said. “I had been on council almost 18 months prior to the disaster, so I was familiar with council and the runnings of the city, but it all changed after the tornado. The level of the involvement and the complexity of the decisions and the challenges just went up exponentially at that point.”

Seibert said the tornado damaged or destroyed about 7,000 homes and 500 businesses, causing an estimated $3 billion dollars in damage. Joplin received about $200 million dollars in relief money from the federal government with about three-quarters of that in the form of Community Block Development Grants, according to city data.

To date, 1,657 homes have been rebuilt and more than 300 businesses are back on their feet. The total construction costs equaled $1.25 billion dollars.

“The amount of hours and volunteer time we benefited from as a community is just one of the true stories of our success,” Seibert said. “It’s not only the residents and their efforts to rebuild, but the help we got from our neighbors and friends from around our area, from around the state and around the nation and the world.”
During the rebuilding process, the city made some changes to its building code requirements. Hurricane straps to keep roofs attached in strong winds as well as smaller gaps in the foundation are now mandatory for new structures. Seibert said it’s still up to residents if they want to build a tornado safe room in their homes.

10 Joplin School buildings were either damaged or destroyed in the storm. Kelli Price, Joplin Schools Communication Director, said the school district took immediate action to its tornado drill policies after watching disturbing images caught on camera during the tornado.

“Prior to our tornado, we would put kids in hallways,” she said. “Well when you watch the surveillance videos you see that those hallways become wind tunnels. We no longer put kids in hallways.”

Price said the total rebuilding budget was around $220 million dollars, which included adding tornado safe rooms to all but two of its schools.

“It’s a relief really to not just parents, but the district and the community as well knowing that our kids are safe.”

Other immediate changes and upgrades following the tornado happened in the city’s emergency management department.

“Since the tornado we have spent almost $300,000 to upgrade our warning system,” said Stammer. “We have installed additional sirens, we have installed two way radio communications for each of our sirens and software to manage them.”

Stammer said he believes before the tornado residents didn’t take the sirens as seriously as they should have.

“For one thing we tested them, honestly, way too often – every week. They kind of got to the point where it happened on a Sunday afternoon a lot of them probably just figured we were testing the sirens.”

Now the department tests the sirens only once a month — on the second Wednesday at 10 a.m. A silent test is also completed each day.

But for some residents like Easton, that siren still makes them twitch. She said her family is now better prepared and ready for severe weather.

“We put our shoes on,” she jokes. “We were wearing neighbors’ shoes and not even matching. Physically our bodies will jerk or twitch, but mentally we’re not afraid.”

The Eastons lost both their home and business that Sunday afternoon. Both have since been rebuilt. Their business, Cupcakes by Liz, is up and running in the very same spot on Main Street where the tornado flattened it to the ground five years ago.

“The green has come back and life is here and it’s beautiful. Our end of town is a little slower,” she said.

Today many corners along Main Street are still deserted. City officials said there are plans for commercials development in those areas, but it could be another three years before construction is complete for many of those new structures.

Seibert said he predicts in about three years, the city will be fully recovered.

“We’re going to have a medical school here in Joplin now,” he said. “We have new industries that have come here after the tornado because of what they’ve seen in this community and its residents, and the resilience they’ve seen and they want to be a part of.”

The medical school is set to open by Fall 2017.

According to newly released Census data, Joplin’s population has now surpassed its pre-tornado population. The estimated population for 2015 was 51,818 compared to 51,140 in 2011.

For Easton, leaving her hometown after losing everything in the tornado never crossed her mind.

“We just dig deep when it’s hard and it came together beautifully as a community,” she said. “The community that I believed we had as a child and know we have as an adult, it just wasn’t an option.”