Joplin, Missouri: 142 Killed by F-5 Tornado | Deadliest Recorded U.S. Tornado | New Videos | New Photos | New Updates

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/27/us/joplin-panoramas.html?ref=us

The New York Times...

[Click on link above to view before-and-after photos]

Published: May 27, 2011

Panoramas of Joplin Before and After the Tornado

Interactive panoramas show the devastation in two locations in Joplin, Mo. Images taken Friday are compared to the same locations before the storm from Google Maps’ Street View.

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PART TWO...

Scattered Photographs

The tornado killed at least 139 people, the young and the old, according to the latest count from city officials, and dozens more remain missing. It destroyed one of the city’s two hospitals and its only public high school. And, in ravaging the gray-stone house at 2430 South Main, it blew black-and-white bits of the city’s past into the air — the images assembled by its last occupant, Joplin’s unofficial photographer, Murwin Mosler, who died in 2003.

These photographs of Joplin’s sons and daughters are now exposed to the elements, framed by jagged debris. Here, on the wet ground, is a portrait of an older woman, circa 1940. There, a dozen wallet-size graduation photos of a young man, circa 1950. Over here, a wedding portrait, circa 1960. Each one a Mosler. Each liberated from a house packed with thousands of photographs and negatives that his daughter, Marcia Long, never mustered the will to throw out.

The many photographs of Mr. Mosler and his studio, amid the rubble and in a collection assembled by The Joplin Globe and the Joplin Museum Complex, capture midcentury Joplin and convey some of what was lost last Sunday.

These photos convey an American place, as much South as Midwest, that developed in the late 19th century around the valuable minerals in its ground — lead, then zinc. A prosperous, rowdy town, host to parades and the occasional lynching, Joplin became a regional hub, with railroads and Route 66 passing through.

Mr. Mosler and his assistants chronicled the city from the 1930s to the 1960s, as it thrived during wartime, as demand for its zinc waned. The Joplin Junior Beef Shows at the stockyards. The exploits of the Joplin Miners baseball team, for whom a young, scrub-faced Mickey Mantle once played. The bowling leagues and building fires and Easter Sunday births and the costumed performances by Mary Ann Hatley’s Dance School.

The other day, while sitting in a car that moved slowly down South Main Street, past a ruined stretch sprinkled with black-and-white portraits from the past, Mr. Woolston, the mayor, picked up the Joplin story pretty much where Mosler had left it. A familiar enough story: a gradual decline, a nearby mall draining downtown’s lifeblood, a community seeking the next big thing.

Mr. Woolston said that a quarter-century ago, Joplin committed itself to economic development, seeking to capitalize on its handsome old buildings. It created a historic district as one way to lure businesses and people back downtown.

Today — or, just a week ago — Joplin was a commercial hub for a half-million people, a solid Republican bloc, with many employed in health care, trucking and manufacturing. Close to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas, it is “the middle of the wheel” of North America, according to Herbert Schmidt, the president of Con-way Truckload, a long-haul carrier and one of the city’s largest employers.

But these days, even Joplinites have trouble navigating their transformed city. Mr. Woolston, for example, grew up in Joplin, went to a local middle school (now damaged), went to the local high school (now destroyed), left for a career in the military and returned more than two decades ago. He knows Joplin — or knew it.

“Particularly at night, but also during the daytime, areas that you’ve gone through thousands of times — you just don’t recognize,” Mr. Woolston said. “I have to stop and get my bearings to realize where I am at, simply because everything is just completely altered.”

Gary Box, 60, the coordinator of business retention and expansion for the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, shared the mayor’s spinning compass. “I’ve always relied on my sense of direction and memory,” said Mr. Box, who spent 14 years as a Joplin police officer. “But I now realize I was always basing it on landmarks, and they’re all gone.”

Where is one-third of Joplin?

Heading south on Main Street, you pass intact buildings and a seemingly undisturbed way of life, save for the inordinate number of people wearing shirts that say Red Cross or Federal Emergency Management Agency or Army Corps of Engineers. An honor guard of flapping American flags urges you on.

All seems fine, until about 15th Street, when unnerving signs of damage come into view. It is slight at first, a blown sign here, a damaged roof there, laid out as if to prepare the visitor, however gently, for what is ahead. Five short blocks later, a wasteland.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/us/29joplin.html?src=recg

The New York Times

May 28, 2011

When Everything Is Gone, Including a Sense of Direction

By DAN BARRY, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and A. G. SULZBERGER

PART ONE...

Where is Dude’s Daylight Donuts, whose glazed treats made mornings better? Where is the Elks lodge, the place to go on Friday nights for a meal, a few beers and a lot of laughs?

Where is St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, and the parochial school always by its side, like an obedient child?

Where is the El Vaquero restaurant, with its tangy margaritas? And Jack’s barber shop, where the world’s problems were solved snip by snip? And the Glory Days music store, with those drum sets daring would-be Ringos to find the beat? And the houses? The thousands of houses?

Where is one-third of Joplin?

All this was here last Sunday afternoon, rooted in the Missouri ground and in the Joplin psyche, as permanent as anything of concrete and routine can be. Down at the donut shop, Dude Pendergraft looked forward to another predawn Monday of rolling dough and making coffee for his early-bird pals. At St. Mary’s school, Monday’s lunch was to be Mexicali chicken, Spanish rice and golden corn. Now all this is gone.

The tornado that carved through southwestern Missouri last Sunday leveled parts of this city of 50,000 so completely — taking landmarks, street signs, everything — that the community’s inner GPS remains out of whack. Longtime residents, including the mayor, will tell you that even when on the central thoroughfare of South Main Street, they are not always sure where they stand.

Theirs is a splintered landscape, defined by remnants of houses, overturned cars and bark-stripped trees that jut from the earth like hands reaching for help. The devastation can become one endless, numbing landfill, blurring into all the other disturbing images the country has seen in this spring of tornadoes, spinning their deadly havoc through the South and the Midwest.

But then some stray piece in the sprawl of brokenness will catch the eye, demanding context: a small oxygen tank, a full jar of oregano, a Kermit the Frog doll. And the context is Joplin, a specific place with a specific American history. Though some of its damage includes a boulevard of brand-name commerce that might be found anywhere in this country, including a Home Depot and a Wal-Mart, much of what was lost was Joplin’s and only Joplin’s.

“It just cut our heart out,” said Bill Scearce, a city councilman.

In the collective memory of Joplin, the Sunday evening tornado arrived quickly and left slowly, as if taking its time, even with 200-mile-an-hour winds, to underscore the Robert Burns reference to the best-laid plans of mice and men. Twisting and howling, widening and narrowing, it mowed east across the city’s midsection, just below the revitalized downtown where the streetlights evoke the lamps used by the underground miners of Joplin’s raucous past.

The mayor, Mike Woolston, 57, thought he was hearing one of the freight trains that move through Joplin every several hours — a familiar comparison to what a tornado sounds like. But Mr. Pendergraft, 79, who scrambled just in time into the basement of his slate-blue house, directly behind his doughnut shop, could summon only the fantastic in trying to describe what he heard: “It sounded like two or three giants, 50 feet tall, going at each other.”

The tornado was democratic in its wrath. It wiped out at least 5,000 houses and apartment buildings, from high-priced subdivisions like Sunset Ridge to the more tired housing stock near Cunningham Park. It clobbered more than 400 businesses, from a modest pawn shop to big-box stores, that help generate the sales tax revenues that Joplin relies on to function as a municipality.

“We think about 25 percent of the businesses licensed in the city are damaged or destroyed,” Mr. Woolston said. In three or four months, he added, “we’ll see a fairly significant dip in sales tax revenue” — the money needed to pay the police, to sweep the streets, to keep a staggered Joplin running. The estimate of damage done to Joplin remains guesswork, with some suggesting that it will be as high as $3 billion or more.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/30joplin.html?_r=1&hp

In Joplin, Obama Offers Healing Words to Residents

Photo: President Obama viewed a tornado-devastated home with residents of Joplin, Mo., on Sunday.

By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: May 29, 2011

With his European tour behind him, President Obama traveled to Joplin Mo. on Sunday, to offer some healing words to a city ravaged by the worst tornado in decades.

As he did during trips after the tornadoes in Alabama and the flooding along the Mississippi River, the president tried to reassure survivors that they would not be forgotten.

“The cameras may leave, but we will be with you every step of the way until this community is back on its feet. We are not going anywhere,” the president told a memorial service on the campus of Missouri Southern State University. “That is not just my promise. It is America’s promise.”

In an emotive speech peppered by biblical homilies and pledges of national solidarity, Mr. Obama praised the residents of Joplin for coming together in the face of tragedy. He recounted stories of heroism, including that of a 26-year-old manager of a Pizza Hut restaurant and father of two who died while sheltering a dozen people in a pizza freezer, trying to wedge the door shut, before he was swept away.

He also spoke of a father who liked to whistle in church and who had rushed to help members of the community, before he was killed by a falling wall.

“The world saw how Joplin has responded,” Mr. Obama said. “You have shown the world what it means to love thy neighbor.”

Earlier, the president visited with survivors and family of the storm that killed more than 130 people and injured more than 900. At least 40 people remain unaccounted for, as authorities continue to sift through the rubble and accounting for the dead.

Air Force One arrived Sunday around midday, flying over a stretch of landscape flattened by the tornado. The president was greeted by Governor Jay Nixon on the tarmac before they set off on a walk around a devastated neighborhood.

He also was to meet with Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, W. Craig Fugate, and local and state officials to coordinate federal assistance and recovery efforts in the city of almost 50,000.

Governor Nixon said the tornado had caused unprecedented devastation even as it had united the people of Joplin like never before. “That storm has brought forward a spirit of resilience the likes of which we’ve never seen,” he said. “What our nation has witnessed this week is the spirit of Joplin, Mo.”

Mr. Obama’s motorcade drove through some of the most devastated neighborhoods, where the houses had no roofs, The Associated Press reported. There, he saw signs of the havoc the tornado had left behind: a recliner sitting amid rubble, a washer-dryer standing next to a decimated house. American flags were planted everywhere.

“Sorry for your loss,” Mr. Obama told an anguished woman, hugging her twice as they talked, the A.P. reported. Another woman told him that her uncle lives up the road — he survived but his house did not. “Tell your uncle we’re praying for him,” the president said.

The president also had words of thanks for the volunteers helping to rebuild the city, including dozens who had streamed in from other states. “It is an example of what the American spirit is all about,” he said.

“We’re going to be here long after the cameras are gone,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re not going to stop until Joplin jumps back on its feet.”

With his re-election campaign fast approaching, Mr. Obama’s ability to connect with voters has been tested in recent months, from the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January, to the tornadoes in Alabama and Mississippi, to the more recent floods that devastated parts of Tennessee.

Mr. Obama lost Missouri to Republican John McCain in 2008. But many residents said they were grateful for the president’s visit and for the attention he was bringing to Joplin. When Governor Nixon introduced him at the memorial, the crowd exploded in rapturous applause.

The A.P. reported that Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar and Representative Keith Ellison had asked Mr. Obama to issue a disaster declaration for parts of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that were hit by a tornado last weekend. It said a federal preliminary damage assessment had found that the storm caused over $16 million in damage to public infrastructure.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43208652/ns/weather/

Obama to Joplin: 'This is a national tragedy'

Numbers look increasingly bleak for families hoping for the best after the monster storm devastated Joplin, Mo.

Photo:
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a memorial service on the campus of Missouri Southern State University during a visit to the community that was devastated a week ago by a tornado on May 29 in Joplin, Missouri.

JOPLIN, Mo. — President Barack Obama says survivors of Missouri's killer tornado in Joplin are showing the world how to come together, and he is pledging that the nation, as he put it, "will be with you every step of the way."

Obama spoke at a memorial service for victims on Sunday. He says it's impossible to know when or why such devastation strikes. But he is praising neighbors for helping each other at great risk to themselves. He says there are heroes "around us all the time."

Obama is visiting survivors and the bereaved from the deadliest tornado in decades, which tore through Joplin a week ago, leaving more than 120 dead and hundreds more injured. At least 40 remain unaccounted for, and the damage is massive.

"This is not just your tragedy. This is a national tragedy, and that means there will be a national response," Obama said.

Air Force One flew over a massive swath of brown as far as the eye could see — a landscape of flattened houses and stripped trees — on its approach to Joplin. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and others greeted him on the tarmac before they set out for their first stop, a walking tour of a destroyed neighborhood. A memorial service punctuated a day of remembrance one week after the disaster.

Obama's motorcade pulled into a neighborhood where downed trees cleaved open houses, roofs were stripped or blown off, cars were cratered and splintered wood was everywhere. He saw nothing whole, but rather small domestic sights — a view into a room with a TV still in place, a recliner sitting amid rubble, a washer-dryer standing next to a decimated house. American flags were planted here and there in the mess.

"Sorry for your loss," Obama told an anguished woman, hugging her twice as they talked. Another woman told him that her uncle lives up the road — he survived but his house did not. "Tell your uncle we're praying for him," the president said.

To those working at the scene, the president said: "We appreciate everything you guys are doing. God bless you." One volunteer told him that people were streaming in from other states to help any way they could.

Obama vowed: "We are going to be here long after the cameras leave. We're not going to stop 'til Joplin's back on its feet."

Obama returned Saturday from a six-day European tour of Ireland, Britain, France and Poland. After days of focusing on the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world, he turned to an even more critical connection: his own, with the American people. He was visiting survivors and the bereaved from the worst tornado in decades, which tore through Joplin a week ago leaving more than 130 dead and hundreds more injured. At least 40 remain unaccounted for, and the damage is massive.

After touring destroyed neighborhoods in the city of 50,000 in southwestern Missouri, he was to speak at the memorial service being held by local clergy and Nixon. He'll offer federal assistance as well as his own condolences.

It's a task Obama has had to assume with increasing frequency of late, after the mass shooting in Arizona in January in which U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was wounded, when tornadoes struck Tuscaloosa, Alabama, last month and more recently when flooding from the Mississippi inundated parts of Memphis, Tennessee.

Such moments can help define a president, but habitually even-tempered Obama is more apt to offer handshakes and hugs than tears and deep emotion.

Though times of trouble can erase politics and unite people, a phenomenon Obama has commented on, his task as healer Sunday unfolded on unfriendly political ground as his re-election campaign approaches. Obama narrowly lost Missouri to Republican Sen. John McCain in 2008, but in Jasper County, where Joplin is located, McCain won by a large margin: 66 percent to 33 percent.

Increasingly bleak
The numbers look increasingly bleak for families hoping for the best after the monster tornado devastated the town, as the city has raised the death toll to at least 139 and state officials say 40 people are still unaccounted for.

Thousands more people far beyond Joplin had been waiting for good news about a teen believed to have been ejected or sucked from his vehicle on the way home from graduation. Several social-networking efforts specifically focused on finding information about Will Norton.

But his family says he, too, is among the dead — found in a pond near where his truck was located.

"At least we know that he wasn't out there suffering," his aunt Tracey Presslor said, holding a framed portrait of her 18-year-old nephew at a news conference. "Knowing that he was gone right away was really a blessing for us."

Mike O'Connell, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the number of unaccounted "just dropped" to 40 because of the latest deceased whose next-of-kin have been notified.

The number had stood at about 100.

More than 130 people have been reported killed in the storm that hit Joplin a week ago. The tornado — an EF-5 packing 200 mph winds —also injured more than 900 people. Tallying and identifying the dead and the missing has proven a complex, delicate and sometimes confusing exercise for both authorities and loved ones.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/norton-302417-press-body.html?pic=2

Orange County (California) Register...

Published: May 28, 2011
Updated: 9:46 p.m.

Teen missing after Joplin tornado found dead

By JAIMEE LYNN FLETCHER and IAN HAMILTON
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

ORANGE – The teenager preparing to enter Chapman University who went missing after the Joplin, Mo., tornado has been found dead.

Will Norton was driving home from his high school graduation when his Hummer H3 was tossed by the tornado, according to The Associated Press.

Mark Norton, the teen's father, tried to persuade his son to pull over but the vehicle flipped several times. Will Norton was thrown from the vehicle, the AP reported.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/29/us-weather-tornadoes-funerals-idUSTRE7...

Reuters...

Joplin prepares for grim task of funerals

Photo: A military uniform is hung on part of a destroyed home in Joplin, Missouri May 28, 2011. Seven more people were confirmed dead over the last 24 hours, bringing the number of fatalities from the powerful Joplin tornado to 139, the city said on Saturday. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

By Elliott Blackburn

JOPLIN, Mo | Sat May 28, 2011 11:35pm EDT

(Reuters) - For some families, goodbye to victims of a powerful tornado that crushed buildings like twigs may only be a glimpse of a hand.

Traumatic injuries to the remains of the dead could force families to dispense with the tradition of a public viewing in this small Midwestern city. State officials said Saturday the temporary morgue in Joplin included partial remains.

The grim and daunting task facing the city's three funeral homes, and some in surrounding communities, was preparing for memorial services and for burial or cremation of at least 139 victims.

"All we can do is take our time," said David Dillon, a former owner of Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary.

The first funeral was in the nearby town of Galena, Kansas on Friday for 27-year-old electrician Adam Darnaby, remembered as an avid fisherman who liked fast cars.

The first services for victims in Joplin will begin on Monday, more than a week after the tragedy, according to Dennis Dreyer, the director of operations for Ozark Memorial Park, where many the dead will be buried.

The pace of the release of the dead has frustrated families anxious to recover loved ones and to move forward in their grief. Families of only 73 of the victims have been notified so far, because officials are following a painstaking process of identification to avoid mistakes.

Lindy Molina drove in from Irving, Texas to try and find her sister and nephew. She found the nine-year-old boy safe, but neighbors said her sister, Melissa Crossley, had died protecting him from the flying debris. Molina brought pictures and tattoo references to the temporary morgue in Joplin, but had no success.

"I personally do understand the process," Molina said. "But it is frustrating."

While the slow release of remains has been stressful for families, it gave the funeral homes, churches and cemeteries time to prepare.

Funeral homes here have worked to pull in resources from four states to handle services for victims. They expect the state of Missouri to release remains to families at a rate of 14 to 16 a day.

A small army of part-time and former workers and volunteers will help. Anything the memorial services needed -- from cars to caskets to embalming materials -- were offered by the Missouri state funeral home association and from colleagues in Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, funeral directors said.

Funeral homes were ready to offer private viewings, when possible, for families still wishing to say goodbye to badly damaged remains, said Tom Keckley, co-owner of Parker Mortuary & Crematory in Joplin. Medical bandages and terry cloth could cover severe injuries, he said.

"It might be looking at a hand that's exposed while other parts are covered, but anything that will let that person know that that is their loved one," Keckley said. "So that they accept it and can begin to heal."

Even for funeral home staff accustomed to consoling grieving families, the Joplin tragedy has been personal. Dillon recognized names on the list of missing.

"You just hurt with them," Dillon said. "You still have to be strong for them."

The Ozark cemetery will be working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, said Dreyer.

His staff was still numb from the tragedy, and focused on day-to-day tasks. They held daily meetings to prepare for the overwhelming job ahead, he said.

Preparing a grave site and holding a service could take four hours, he said. Many employees had pledged to donate their time for the victims' funerals.

"You'll find Joplin is a close community," Dreyer said. "From start to finish."

(Editing by Greg McCune)

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/28/2910966/joplin-whats-ahead.html

The Kansas City Star...

Posted on Sat, May. 28, 2011 10:15 PM
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As it recovers from tornado, Joplin can take lessons from other cities
By ERIC ADLER, SCOTT CANON and RICK MONTGOMERY

The Kansas City Star

Photo: Sheri McAllister hugged Jon McCoy, a family friend, for assisting in the cleanup of her Joplin home Tuesday morning. Husband Edward McAllister stood in the rubble in the background.

DAVID EULITT

On Wednesday morning, Alexandra Kent, 19, removed clothes from her parents’ washing machine while recovering items from the rubble that once was their Joplin home. Tim and Stacey Bartow rode out the tornado in their basement along with family and neighbors. Tim painted messages of hope on his home. “The only place we’re going to go from here is up,” he said. Visit KansasCity.com for video of the Bartows and other Joplin survivors. This 360-degree view shows the neighborhood around St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin on Saturday. The EF5 tornado that hit the hospital directly on Sunday was on the ground for several miles.

JOPLIN, Mo. | A week ago today, although it seems an eternity ago now, life was good for Tim Kent and his family.

That was a little before 6 p.m. when he and his wife, Jan, were hauling groceries from their car, and the sky turned black, a rumbling locomotive sound grew in the air, and their neighbor, Jim Eason, ran out to the top of his lawn and screamed:

“There is rotation above your house!”

The Kents dropped their groceries. They bolted into their home and shouted for their two teenage daughters to run. Alexandra, 19, a student at the University of Missouri, grabbed the family’s pet rabbit. They hit the basement just before the house they had lived in for 19 years heaved, splintered and burst into a heap of debris.

As close as any, their home at 2818 W. Kingsdale Road was at ground zero for one of the worst tornadoes on record, an EF5 with 200 mph winds that took 139 lives, as of 9 p.m. Saturday, and more than 8,000 houses, apartments and businesses.

When the Kents emerged and looked at the devastation around them — some houses obliterated, others sheared in half — they stood, in many ways, in exactly the same situation as tornado survivors in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and in Greensburg, Kan.

Kent, 52, an environmental engineer, knew that from that moment on “everything is different.”

“It is like 9/11. There will be life before the tornado. And there will be life after the tornado.”

What comes next?

Where will Joplin be a month from now? Where can it be in a few years?

• • •

Within hours of the disaster, even as ambulances still wailed through the night, city officials stood inside the justice center at a press conference and emphasized a message that would be repeated often: This city will rise from its knees.

Flags went up from the wreckage, out of pride and resolve.

Joplin’s school superintendent declared that, even with four schools flattened or deemed a total loss, classes would begin on time in August.

City Manager Mark Rohr said officials were already working on a plan for the town’s future, searching out sites to dump millions of tons of debris.

“We will overcome this hardship,” Rohr said.

“We will rebuild this city,” Gov. Jay Nixon vowed, voicing rhetoric once heard in places like Greensburg, Tuscaloosa, New Orleans and New York.

Few argue the importance of the message.

“It helps,” said Vicky Mieseler, vice president of clinical services for the Ozark Center, the mental health arm of Freeman Health Systems, a group of three hospitals in Joplin that, within 24 hours of the tornado, saw its mental health crisis calls jump from 500 a month to nearly 100 a day.

To speak anything other than encouragement, she said, could “give the city permission to fail.”

“They’re instilling a sense of pride and strength,” Mieseler said. “The message is, ‘We can do this.’ It’s like a coach, a cheerleader, someone in authority we look up to. That person helps the rest of us.”

But the experiences of Greenburg, virtually wiped from the map on May 4, 2007, and even Tuscaloosa — barely a month removed from the April 27 twister that killed 41 people and destroyed or damaged 7,500 buildings — speak to the hard work that lies ahead for Joplin.

Rubble will be cleared. Homes will be rebuilt. The economy will be spurred. Communities and neighbors will bond tighter by shared experience.

But people also will pick up and move. Almost half of Greensburg’s population of 1,400 did not return.

With homes bulldozed, vacant lots will dot neighborhoods.

The address “FEMAville” — for the thousands of displaced residents who will call Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers home for months to years — will become part of the local language.

For a community with an 8 percent unemployment rate, the winds that blew away many of their homes also took their livelihoods. How will they pay their bills?

Only days removed from the tornado, Kent and his neighbors said they’re still in shock.

Countless questions swirl in their minds, but one stands out.

“The question is, ‘Do I even want to live here anymore?’ ” said Ed McAllister, whose home at 2701 S. Winfield Road was leveled. The family’s car lay flipped upside down on top of the mound that was his house.

It’s where he and Sheri, 47, raised Megan, 19, Lydia, 17, and Luke, 14. It’s where their memories live: birthdays, Christmases. They celebrated Ed’s 50th birthday with 50 people last week.

In the sweep of a second hand, that neighborhood was crushed and so was the home that housed those memories. The lot is on a rise. Ed looks across at the ruination — wet clothes dangling from nails, bedrooms exposed to the sky, floors sliced away. He picks through family china that survived. Trees, once leafy oaks, stand as mangled trunks, thrashed naked.

At 2520 N. Kingsdale, Sam McKenzie, 52, lives with his wife and three kids. He said his daughter Emily, 10, is too frightened to even come back to the house.

“Right now, we’d say we’re undecided,” he said of staying.

For 18 years, Jud and Cindy Fischer, both 52, called 2712 S. Jefferson home. Now it’s a mound of wreckage. On Wednesday, Jud Fischer — whose son Nathan is 18 and is headed to West Point Military Academy — bent to plant an American flag into what was once his second floor.

“I think 90 percent of them will stay,” Fischer said of his neighbors. He’s staying because of family and his job as an accountant.

Kent is less optimistic. “Maybe 50 percent,” he guessed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.freep.com/article/20110529/NEWS07/105290518/2011-now-deadliest-year-t...

Detroit Free Press...

2011 now deadliest year for tornadoes since 1953
May 29, 2011

PHOTO: Friends of Will Norton -- who was coming home from his high school graduation when the EF5 tornado hit last week -- console one another Saturday in Joplin, Mo. Norton's body was found Friday. / CHARLIE RIEDEL/Associated Press

BY NOMAAN MERCHANT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

JOPLIN, Mo. -- The death toll from the monster tornado last week in Missouri has risen to at least 139. Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr said Saturday during a news conference that the death toll rose to at least 142, but later revised that figure down without elaboration.

That makes this the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1953, based on an assessment of figures from the National Weather Service.

If the death toll does stand at 139, it would place this year's tornado death toll at 520. Until now, the highest recorded death toll in a single year was 519 in 1953.

Missouri says the number of people still unaccounted for since the Joplin tornado May 22 is now 100. State Department of Public Safety Deputy Director Andrea Spillars said Saturday that within that number, nine people have been reported dead by their families, but state officials are working to confirm. She said the temporary morgue has 142 human remains, but that includes partial remains.

"Some of those remains may be the same person," she said, adding that officials are trying to use scientific means rather than relying on relatives' visual identifications.

The state has been working to pare down the list of people missing and unaccounted for in the wake of the deadliest single U.S. twister in more than six decades.

Rohr acknowledged Friday afternoon that there may be "significant overlap" between the confirmed dead and the remainder of the missing list. Still, search-and-rescue crews were undeterred, with 600 volunteers and 50 dog teams out again across the city.

"We're going to be in a search-and-rescue mode until we remove the last piece of debris," Rohr said.

The tornado -- an EF5 packing 200-m.p.h. winds -- was the deadliest since 1950, and more than 900 people were injured.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/05/28/2011-05-28_death_toll_from_j...

New York Daily News...

Death toll from Joplin, Missouri tornado rises to 139 as volunteers search for the missing

BY Katie Nelson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Saturday, May 28th 2011, 12:17 PM

Mark Siler carries some salvageable items from the house of his friend as another storm approached Joplin, Mo. earlier this week.

Mike Gullett/AP

Mark Siler carries some salvageable items from the house of his friend as another storm approached Joplin, Mo. earlier this week.

The terrible twister that ripped through Missouri last week has taken at least 139 lives, officials said Saturday.

The updated death toll adds seven souls to those killed in Joplin, Mo., during the deadliest tornado in the U.S. since 1950.

State workers have been whittling down the missing persons list, said city spokeswoman Lynn Onstot.

But there are still many more who remain unaccounted for: An original list of 232 was at 105 on Saturday.

At least 90 survivors on the initial list had been located alive, Missouri Department of Public Safety deputy director Andrea Spillars said.

But at least a half dozen others were identified as among the dead, and some new names had been added to those who went missing amid the 200 mph winds.

Some 600 volunteers and 50 dog teams continue to comb for bodies throughout the city in search of bodies.

With News Wire Services

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/05/28/2011-05-28_death_toll_from_j...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/28/MNQ81JMUR2.DTL

San Francisco Chronicle | Gate

Joplin, Mo., tornado death toll hits 139

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Charlie Riedel / AP

Kim Stuart and her dog Thunder help a search crew look through a Joplin, Mo., neighborhood after last Sunday's tornado - the deadliest single U.S. twister in more than six decades.

(05-29) 04:00 PDT Joplin, Mo. -- Families hoping to find surviving relatives after the monster tornado that devastated the town of Joplin received only grim information Saturday as city officials raised the death toll to at least 139.

State authorities say 100 people are still missing since the tornado - an EF-5 packing 200 mph winds - slashed through the city last Sunday.

The state has been working to pare down the list of people missing and unaccounted for in the wake of the deadliest single U.S. twister in more than six decades.

Nationally, the tornado toll for 2011 exceeds the previous highest recorded death toll in a single year - 519 in 1953. There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates and not on precise figures.

The National Weather Service said 58 tornadoes touched down in Alabama on April 27, killing 238 people in that state alone and injuring thousands. Scores died in other states from twisters spawned by the same storm system. Put together, emergency management officials say the twisters left a path of destruction 10 miles wide and 610 miles long, or about as far as a drive from Birmingham, Ala., to Columbus, Ohio.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/28/MNQ81JMUR2.DTL#ixzz1NjBaLJU2

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tornado-photos-20110527,0,3...

Los Angeles Times...

Volunteer reunites Joplin's victims with tornado-scattered photos
Abi Almandinger has been collecting personal photos blown for miles by the Joplin, Mo., tornado and posting them on a Facebook page to help their owners find them.

Joplin's lost photos

Photo: Abi Almandinger, 38, is collecting personal photos and papers widely scattered during the tornado in Joplin, Mo., and posting them on Facebook to help their owners recover them. (Matt Pearce, For The Times / May 27, 2011)

By Matt Pearce, Special to the Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2011, 10:23 p.m.
Reporting from Joplin, Mo.

On Friday morning in tornado-ravaged Joplin, Abi Almandinger was running perhaps the most peculiar search-and-rescue mission in town.

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The 38-year-old Carthage, Mo., woman was looking not for victims, not for a wallet, purse or pet, but for strangers' lost photos and mementoes.

At Christ's Church, just a few blocks outside Joplin's disaster zone, pastor Tim Chambers gave Almandinger some things people had found on the church lawn, including a water-warped Polaroid of a young woman dated Christmas 1979 — and a wrinkled and yellowed discharge letter for Staff Sgt. Floyd E. Huff, dated Dec. 21, 1945, and signed by Harry S. Truman.

"They're here, but we didn't know what to do with them," Chambers said to Almandinger. "I'm glad there's a system in place."

For the storm survivors who have lost everything, insurance and federal aid money will soon pour in to help replace their smashed vehicles and the piles of tinder and brick that used to be their homes. But there's no safety net to replace the photos and souvenirs that fill up a life — the personal memorabilia that say what someone's done, where someone's been, who someone is.

Almandinger, a mother who works for a scrapbooking company, fell under the sway of the area's pervasive spirit of volunteerism and got an idea: Try to collect lost photos where they pop up, post scans of them online, and hope the owners see them.

The idea came to her as she was listening to a local radio station. A woman had called saying she'd found a stack of photos but didn't know what to do with them. "The guys on the radio suggested she hold on to them," Almandinger said, "and that's when I knew that that was how I could help."

She's since been offering aid via Facebook, phone calls and radio.

"I thought that would be a good fit for me in terms of helping," she said. "I have two kids at home and can't get on the front lines." But compiling photos, helping people organize their memories — it's a natural fit for her.

Photos from Joplin reportedly have been discovered as far away as Springfield — about 70 miles to the east. People have already started uploading photos to Almandinger's Facebook page, called Joplin's Found Photos. That page and a similar one, Lost Photos of Joplin, MO Tornado, offer a scattershot portrait of the storm's collective victim: the city of Joplin, population 49,024.

Found, a school photo: the toothless smiles of Mrs. Lemstra's first-grade class, Thayer Elementary School, 1992-1993.

Found, a ticket stub: a good seat in Section 19 for a March 14, 2002, game between the L.A. Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals. That night, the Cards win 4-1, with Jason Isringhausen picking up the save.

Found, a wrinkled black-and-white, stolen by the wind and dropped into a stranger's yard: a young woman in a dress relaxing in the grass, silhouetted gently against the light, sitting close to a smiling baby boy on some sunny day that must have passed more than half a century ago.

All can now be seen on the Joplin pages.

Similar efforts have also taken shape in the wake of the Tuscaloosa tornadoes.

In Joplin, this accumulation of strangers' photos on Facebook — a poetic, poignant blending of private histories into public ones — is quietly symbolic of the town. Joplin hadn't wanted to become synonymous with tragedy, but beneath a crush of wind, concrete, tears and headlines, it did.

The disaster has also exposed some hidden moments captured on camera.

Vicki Peterson, 51, a nurse who set up an emergency clinic at Wildwood Southern Baptist Church to treat the wounded after the storm, was walking along 20th Street when she found a picture of a man handcuffed to a bed, naked.

"I didn't know if it was something he was into or something criminal, so I turned it in to the police," she said. "Whoever he is, even if he is kind of weird, he probably doesn't want people to see that."

At least one connection had already been made on the Lost Photos of Joplin group: A woman recognized a warped and torn photo found on Brownell Avenue. "That's my family," she commented, adding "Thank you!!!!!"

Almandinger's Friday morning drive to pick up photos collected at local churches brought her into the disaster zone for the first time. "Oh my gosh," she gasped, covering her mouth as she spotted a friend's shattered house. "Oh my gosh."

"It's so strange to be so close to the damage and feel so removed from it, because I have a home that I can go back to," she said, as her 4-year-old son, Hank, read "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" in the back seat.

Almandinger, driving past the utility trucks and downed power lines and seemingly endless piles of debris, was expecting to receive more found photos in the mail soon — and to begin a new round of posting.

"They just keep posting pictures and calling," she said Friday. "I've talked to about 30 to 40 people by phone or text" since Thursday morning. "I'll be starting the process this evening, and getting them posted as soon as I can."

"My passion has always been to help people do something with their photos," she said. "Photos are always the one thing people want to take in an emergency."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-joplin-tornado-20110528,0,4...

Los Angeles Times...

Joplin's police chief warns about post-tornado looters and scams
The Missouri town's death count rises to 132, and people show frustration about delays in identifying many of the dead.

Photo: Amanda Carper holds her son Silas, 5 months, as she searches the rubble of the home of her grandfather in Joplin, Mo. He was killed in the tornado that roared through. Now officials are warning about looters and cleanup scams. (Mario Tama, Getty Images / May 27, 2011)

By Kim Murphy and Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

May 28, 2011
Reporting from Joplin, Mo.—
As more residents ventured back into Joplin's massive tornado zone Friday, sifting through wet belongings and shoveling aside debris, police warned against a small number of nighttime looters who have plundered the 6-mile-long path of the violent twister.

"Wrapped up in what we view as debris is what's left of people's lives," Police Chief Lane Roberts told reporters, declaring that his force was "saturating" the damage zone and had already made arrests in the cases of 17 thefts and three burglaries.

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"I'm happy to say that each person responsible for that conduct is now enjoying the hospitality of the city of Joplin," said Roberts, who did not specify how many looting suspects had been detained. "Please understand, we are going to be very, very proactive. It is the only way we can ensure that people who have already been victims of something horrendous don't continue to be victimized by their fellow human beings."

In a similar vein, Missouri Atty. Gen. Chris Koster said he had appointed investigators to look for cases of price gouging, fraudulent charities and cleanup scams that typically plague disaster zones.

"Right now, we feel actually very, very good about the way things have transpired over the last several days and the spirit of cooperation that has permeated this community, but we want you to know we will remain vigilant," he said.

In a meeting with city residents Thursday, he warned: "Over the next couple of weeks, people are going to knock on your doors … and they're going to say, 'For two or three thousand dollars, I will clean up the wreckage that exists on your property. Give me the check and I'll come back tomorrow.' ''

"Don't sign those checks until the work is done," he said. "Protect yourselves. Protect this community."

The official death toll from Sunday's twister rose to 132, amid growing frustration over delays in confirming the names of the dead and determining how many residents remained unaccounted for.

Andrea Spillars, deputy director of the state Department of Public Safety, said federal and state investigators had been able to shrink the list of missing persons over the last 24 hours from 232 to 156, despite the addition of 22 new names.

Ninety residents' names were removed after credible reports that they were alive and accounted for, she said.

Joplin Fire Chief Mitch Randles said no one had been found alive in the rubble for the last two days, though authorities had completed four full sweeps of the entire 6-mile-long, half-mile-wide zone.

He said that with the search dogs exhausted, investigators were focusing on "targeted" searches aimed at "literally hundreds" of areas in which human scent had been previously identified by the dogs.

A curfew remains in place in the affected area between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., and though reports of looting have been relatively few, residents who have not removed their belongings or who are continuing to live in lightly damaged houses along the outskirts are worried.

Rhonda Schmidt, a 60-year-old hotel employee, said she was asleep Thursday night when three men tried to slice through her screen to enter her house, which has electricity only via a cable run from her son's house nearby.

Schmidt said her son fortunately was out for a late-night walk, spotted the looters and called police, who quickly arrested them. Then he woke her to tell her what had happened.

"I just thought, OK, that's one more thing," she said.

Arielle Speer, 27, said she saw people loading clothes and a devastated apartment building's washing machine onto trucks with Arkansas license plates Tuesday night. Her suspicions were heightened when she picked through the rubble after them and found a purse left open, its wallet emptied.

"Storm brings out the best and the worst in people," she said.

Concerns about the possibility of looting have been a frequent refrain on the local talk radio station that acts as a clearinghouse for the community.

"We're not Chicago; we're not New York," a DJ chastised his listeners after a Red Cross volunteer recounted spotting looters. "We're the heart of America."

Special correspondent Matt Pearce contributed to this report.

http://latimesphoto.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/la-tornado01.jpg

Joplin, Missouri

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-joplin-funeral-20110529,0,1...

Los Angeles Times...

Funerals the next hurdle for Joplin

With the death toll from the tornado now at 139, the Missouri town is starting to honor its dead. One service is held for a Home Depot manager who was killed saving others.

Photo: M. Dean Wells, shown with his wife, died ushering others to safety while working at Home Depot. (Family photo / May 28, 2011)

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

May 29, 2011
Reporting from Webb City, Mo.—

As 200-mph tornado winds bore down on the Joplin Home Depot near here a week ago, the floor manager ordered customers and employees into the back of the store. At the last minute, though, desperate people still in the parking lot were trying to find a way in.

"There were people tapping at the door," branch manager Steve Cope said. Electrical department manager M. Dean Wells let them in, herded them back toward a safer area, then helped others in, about a dozen in all.

He was near the front of the store when a massive, prefabricated concrete wall collapsed on him and on a father and two young girls whom Wells had just ushered in.

By the time it was over, the bulk of the massive warehouse was little more than a pile of twisted metal and concrete. Employees and customers who made it to the rear of the store survived. Six others, including Wells, still near the front, did not.

"Today, we gather for the absolute No. 1 quality my father had. He served others before he served himself," DeAnna Mancini, Wells' 40-year-old daughter, told hundreds of mourners who gathered here Saturday at First Christian Church. Among them was Home Depot Chief Executive Frank Blake.

"He put himself in a very dangerous place to allow other people to survive the storm," said Cope, who is now overseeing a makeshift retail outlet of generators, chainsaws, roofing and plywood in the ravaged parking lot.

Along with a flag commemorating her husband's 10 years of service with the Army, Wells' wife, Margaret Sue, was presented with a neatly folded orange apron of the kind her husband wore each day among the towering aisles of cables, switches and electrical boxes that were his small empire.

The death toll from the Joplin tornado rose Saturday to 139, bringing the total number of tornado deaths in the U.S. this season to 520, surpassing the record of 519 set in 1953, according to the Associated Press. More than 100 people remain unaccounted for.

With President Obama scheduled to appear at a community memorial service Sunday, the gathering for Wells was only one of many that will mark this town's next slow step in recovering from the killer windstorm.

Pastor Mike Geisert, who presided over the service, said afterward that he wrestled with how to present the disaster to his congregation, resisting the notion that it was an "act of God." That, he said, implied that Joplin deserved it. "I don't buy into that," he said.

For those gathered to remember Wells, 59, the pastor read a text from the Bible about the fine homes in heaven, and the place among them being prepared for believers.

"I would think that in this week in which so many homes have been smashed to smithereens, there ought to be some good news in that — that God is preparing a place for us," Geisert said. "Jesus has prepared a place for Dean, and he's prepared one for me and you."

Family, friends and co-workers recalled an optimistic, overwhelmingly friendly man who loved fly-fishing, hunting and camping, and who took intense pride in his grandchildren, whom he taught to shoot a gun and play chess. He was constantly passing around photos of his first great-grandson, born in January in New York, though he had yet to meet him.

"He cried with each and every one of his grandchildren when they were born," Mancini said.

To many, Wells was known as "The Whistler." Enthralled by a bird-call whistler he met as a child in Colorado, Wells honed his own skills and began whistling a flute-like accompaniment with the men's singing group from his church as they traveled each week to nursing homes and hospitals to perform everything from "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" to "You Get a Line, I'll Get a Pole."

The local Neosho Daily News once profiled Wells, who often attracted an audience at Home Depot, when Verizon picked up one of his riffs as a cellphone ringtone. "My whistling is a way to uplift people," he said at the time.

The onset of the funeral season in Joplin has been delayed by the lengthy process of positively identifying the dead. Mancini and her sister, Paulla Wells, 39, knew that Cope had found their father's wallet next to his body. Yet officials refused to release it until the day before Saturday morning's funeral, Mancini said.

"It was FEMA this, FEMA that," she said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We really haven't had the chance to grieve, because we've had to do nothing but fight to get Dad back. And a lot of families are going through this. You feel helpless," she said.

Wells' remains were finally released Friday at noon.

Back at her parents' home, Mancini said, she was searching through her father's desk for a CD of him whistling "Amazing Grace" — its lonely tremolo would fill the church Saturday — when she came across a church program on which her father had scrawled a note from the sermon.

"He writes, 'No greater sacrifice can be given than to give one's life for another,' " Mancini said. "I found that, in my dad's own handwriting!"

She swallowed to get her voice back.

"I am so proud of him," she said. "I'm proud of everybody who made it through this."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/28/missouri.tornado/index.html?hpt=T2

CNN...

Joplin twister's death toll rises to 142

By Michael Martinez, CNN
May 28, 2011 6:59 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Missouri authorities have identified additional people killed in last weekend's tornado, bringing the toll of the United States' single deadliest twister ever recorded to 142 deaths, authorities said Saturday.

Among the dead was Will Norton, a recent high school graduate who attracted national attention when he disappeared during the storm.

The 18-year-old was driving home from his graduation Sunday when the tornado destroyed the Hummer H3 he and his father were in.

"Mark (Norton's father) said that he reached over and he grabbed Will with both of his arms ... he held on to him until he possibly couldn't anymore and so he's feeling really bad about that because as a dad you don't want to ever let go of your kids. You want to protect them forever. But at least we know that he did absolutely everything he possibly could," said Tracey Presslor, Norton's aunt, through tears.

Norton's body was found Friday by divers in a pond close to where his vehicle had been.

Meanwhile, 100 persons remain unaccounted for, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said in a statement Saturday.

Deputy Director Andrea Spillars acknowledged earlier that families are frustrated that the identification process hasn't proceeded quickly enough the past week.

Authorities are relying on a scientific identification of the remains, and while that process is slower, it's more reliable than a family member's visual identification, she said.

Authorities are using past X-rays, dental records and body markings to help identify bodies, Spillars said.

"We will go through this process as quickly as possible, knowing how important it is to be accurate," she said, joined by law officers and others behind her. "We know that this has been a community that has been tragically impacted by this. All these people behind me have worked 24 hours a day.

Body ID process adds to Joplin's pain

"It's a very scientific process. It's a very exacting process," Spillars continued. "I can tell you that it's a very respectful process, and I can tell you that someone is with that loved one every step of the way."

More than 50 state troopers are working around the clock on the cases, she added.

Many anxious family members have been waiting to hear what became of missing loved ones in Joplin, the flash point of a wicked tornado last Sunday that has produced the highest death toll from a single tornado in the United States since modern recordkeeping began in 1950.

Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr told reporters Saturday that the death toll has reached 142, up from 132 reported a day earlier.

"We're still in search-and-rescue mode," he said, adding that more than 500 search-and-rescue volunteers were in Joplin Saturday working.

As many as 3,000 volunteers are thought to be in the city in total, he said, helping in a variety of ways.

Roving groups of people with tools and equipment were spotted going door to door -- or lot to lot -- asking what they could do.

Volunteers arrived in cars and vans, pickups and trucks -- many with out-of-state license plates. Some painted their vehicles to announce their intentions. Signs read, "Joplin Bound, "From Plano TX to Joplin" and "Free Chainsaw Work."

The number of people missing from the massive tornado has steadily fallen to 100 -- from 156 on Friday and 232 on Thursday, officials said. Included in the 100 still missing are nine people who were reported dead by their families, but for whom official confirmation is underway.

Still, residents have expressed angst over the time-consuming identification process.

"It's frustrating to the families and it's frustrating to me," Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges said this week. "It just takes time to go through those identifiers and get them to the families."

As of Friday morning, more than 2,500 Missourians affected by Sunday's tornadoes have applied for federal assistance to help with home repairs and cover other personal losses, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The agency reported that more than $2.8 million worth of assistance has already been approved, which is separate from public assistance that the state can receive for emergency response needs and longer-term rebuilding projects like schools, roads and firehouses.

President Barack Obama is expected to tour Joplin on Sunday, meeting with state and local authorities as well as families affected by the devastation. A moment of silence is expected to be observed Sunday too.

CNN's Kara Devlin, Mariano Castillo, Chris Turner and Dugald McConnell contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/24/missouri.tornado/index.html?hpt=C1

CNN...

Deadly tornado kills 124, leaves 'twilight zone' in its wake

By the CNN Wire Staff
May 24, 2011 10:32 p.m. EDT

At 10 ET on "AC360º," Anderson Cooper brings firsthand accounts of surviving the powerful tornado. Also, did you experience the tornado? Send your photos, videos or stories.

PART ONE...

Joplin, Missouri (CNN) -- The tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, Sunday killed 124 people, authorities said Tuesday, in what was the deadliest single U.S. tornado since modern record-keeping began 61 years ago.

An estimated 750 people have been treated at area hospitals, said Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr, who told residents of the tornado-ravaged town to be prepared in case a new wave of destructive storms strikes.

A tornado warning was issued, then canceled, Tuesday night for Joplin. The storm involved likely will pass well north of the city, said forecasters. They predicted Joplin could still get hit by strong wind gusts of more than 70 miles per hour.

On a brighter note, rescue workers pulled two more people alive from the rubble within the last 24 hours, Rohr said.

Also Tuesday, forecasters raised their assessment of the Sunday storm, ranking it at the top of the scale used to rate tornadoes.

The National Weather Service has determined the twister packed top winds of more than 200 mph, making it a 5 on the enhanced Fujita scale, said Bill Davis, the meteorologist who reviewed the damage.

Davis said the tornado left "about six miles of total destruction" in its wake. Examinations of some of the buildings destroyed or damaged convinced forecasters to raise the designation, he said.

Roughly 8,000 structures within the city of Joplin were damaged, Rohr said, citing a Federal Emergency Management Agency report. A previous estimate had put the number of buildings damaged or destroyed at 2,000.

Among the dead in Joplin were 10 residents and a staff member at a nursing home, a company official said.

Two other staffers at Greenbriar Nursing Home are in critical condition at a hospital, said the home's vice president, Bill Mitchell.

Of the other 79 residents of the home, all but one are accounted for, he said. Only rubble remains and survivors have been moved to temporary housing or are with family members.

"It just looks like a war zone," said Eddie Atwood in a CNN iReport from the scene. From where he stood, Atwood said, "You could see all the way to the horizon because all the houses and all the trees were just leveled."

"I was walking down Main Street. Everything was so razed over, it was disorienting because some of the streets -- you couldn't even tell where you were at. After living in Joplin all my life it was like living in the twilight zone."

Joplin is not in the clear yet as far as weather goes: The National Weather Service warned there is a chance of another tornado outbreak -- with the peak time ending at midnight Tuesday -- over a wide swath including parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska and Missouri.

Already Tuesday evening, at least four people were killed and many more injured when a deadly string of tornadoes and thunderstorms cut through central Oklahoma, officials said.

Joplin Police Chief Lane Roberts said the city was imposing a curfew Tuesday night in areas struck by the tornado to head off the threat of looting.

"The sole function is to reduce the opportunity for people to loot and steal, and we're hoping the folks who live in that area will cooperate with us," he said.

CONTINUED...

CONTINUED...

PART TWO...

After an hour of searching the ruined hospital parking lot, John Randolph, 23, found what he was looking for: the silver Chevrolet pickup truck that he shared with his father. The truck had been picked up by the tornado, compacted, carried out of the parking lot and dumped on the northeastern edge of the hospital grounds.

“It was a three-quarter ton,” Mr. Randolph said. “Now it looks like a half-ton.”

The tornado was part of a weather system in which cold and warm fronts collided throughout the middle sections of the country, meteorologists said. It was an event apt to spawn supercell tornadoes along the storm front like the one that struck Joplin.

Doug Stillions, 59, and his wife, Melissa, 37, said that when they heard the tornado warning siren go off Sunday they hurriedly took cover in a neighbor’s basement with their 3-year-old son.

“It was just a black wall to the west,” Mr. Stillions said. “It was dark as night.”

They said they had held hands and prayed as the tornado slammed through at thunderous volume and an accompanying pressure so intense the couple said it felt as if their heads might explode.

As the sun rose Monday, they walked out into a world in which the few trees left standing had the bark stripped off them, a house on a hillside had been swept up and carried into a road, and the Stillions’s own home had part of its roof sheared off.

More punishing weather arrived Monday, as rain intensified in the afternoon and the National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Jasper County, including Joplin and nearby towns and hamlets. The storm was believed to be capable of producing hail, but not tornadoes.

“It’s just overwhelming,” said Lois Richardson, 75, who moved to Joplin three years ago from California, where she survived several earthquakes. “I’ll take two earthquakes to one tornado any day,” she said. “There’s nothing that compares to a tornado.”

Ms. Richardson, who was thrown against a wall in her house by the force of the twister, said she saw a tree fly horizontally past her window.

Search and rescue teams aided by dogs were combing the rubble, searching for survivors.

Downed cellphone towers, telephone lines and power poles were making communication difficult, and at least 20,000 people remained without power. Many of the roads in the area were closed by felled trees, including Interstate 44, the region’s main highway. Volunteers drove slowly down wet streets offering water bottles and rides to residents.

The White House on Monday said President Obama, who is on a state trip to Europe, had called Governor Nixon to “personally extend his condolences and to tell all of the families of Joplin affected by the severe tornadoes that they are in his thoughts and prayers.”

Mr. Obama has directed W. Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to travel to Missouri to oversee the federal response. Tornadoes have killed hundreds of people in the last two months and caused millions of dollars in damage from Minnesota and Missouri to Oklahoma and North Carolina. Tuscaloosa, Ala., continues to recover from a massive twister that tore through the city in late April.

Joplin’s was by far the worst damage on a day of brutal storms in the Midwest, including a tornado in Minneapolis that city officials said left one person dead and dozens injured in an area that covered several blocks.

Monica Davey contributed reporting from Chicago, and Noam Cohen from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24tornado.html?_r=1&hp

The New York Times...

PART ONE...

Death Toll Rises Above 100 From Missouri Tornado

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

Photo: Emergency workers waited for a medical team after finding a body in a car in Joplin, Mo., on Monday.

By A.G. SULZBERGER and BRIAN STELTER
Published: May 23, 2011

JOPLIN, Mo. — Much of this southwestern Missouri city lay in ruins on Monday after a massive tornado, the latest storm to ravage the Midwest and South this spring, tore through the area, killing more than 100 people. Officials say they expect the death toll to climb.

The twister, which touched down about 6 p.m. Sunday in this city of 49,000 people, ripped apart buildings, started fires, uprooted trees and left cars in mangled stacks of metal. By Monday afternoon, the authorities confirmed 116 dead and 400 injured.

Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri said the enormous size of the storm and its slow, plodding pace were to blame for the destruction.

“This tornado basically started over Joplin and stayed there for a long time,” Mr. Nixon said in an interview as he drove to Joplin to oversee rescue efforts. “It is devastating, but we are working hard to continue to find those that are still alive.”

Mr. Nixon said five families had been found alive so far and were pulled from rubble.

Residents received a 24-minute warning that the tornado was headed toward the city, giving many a few precious moments to gather children and run for safety. When the tornado struck, it cut a path of damage through Joplin that officials estimate was nearly a mile wide and four miles long. Wind speeds reached 198 miles per hour.

As much as 30 percent of the town was damaged, including more than 2,000 buildings, among them a major hospital, a nursing home and several schools, firehouses and large stores, including a Wal-Mart and a Home Depot. Water treatment and sewage plants were also hit by high winds, and authorities cautioned residents to boil water.

“It is very rare to get a tornado like this, but it is even more rare to get a tornado like this in a highly populated area like Joplin,” said Doug Cramer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The tornado made a direct hit on St. John’s Regional Medical Center, and then appeared to stall over it for a minute or more, people inside the hospital at the time said. Portions of the hospital’s roof had been pulled apart by the winds and sections of its facade were missing.

By Monday morning, the hospital, which is a major trauma care center in the area, had moved all its patients to other facilities, said Cora Scott, a spokeswoman for the hospital. But it was uncertain how many of the 183 patients who were there when the tornado struck were killed.

Signs of a frenzied evacuation were evident Monday: a mattress was in the grass outside the entrance, gurneys and wheelchairs were piled up in the lobby, and respirator units were still beeping faintly inside the building.

Ms. Scott said the hospital had a few minutes of warning and was in the process of following its tornado plan — moving patients into hallways — when the tornado struck.

Rescue workers said nearly every patient in the hospital had been cut by glass that had been blown out of the windows.

“It was mass chaos trying to get patients out,” said Sgt. Rodney Rodebush, 30, a National Guard soldier who has served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sergeant Rodebush said he had carried about 25 patients out, including some who were put into the beds of pickup trucks and taken to other hospitals. He said he had found a dead woman dressed in her pajamas outside the hospital entrance.

On Monday, as a doctor and a medical technician stood outside the entrance to the emergency room, a police officer came over to them.

“Just a fair warning,” the officer said. “The roof is about to collapse.”

In the parking lot, the hospital’s helicopter lay amid a heap of rubble, wrapped up in a chain link fence along with two cars and a tree. Its rotor and blades were missing. The residential blocks around the hospital were a wasteland: houses that were leveled and trees that were snapped off and tossed about left behind a vivid green carpet of cleaved foliage.

CONTINUED...

This pic is from the same storm, via Springfield, about 60 miles east of Joplin.

Photo by: Rick Adair

It's weird being so close to a major disaster like this. Joplin is very close to Tulsa and a lot of people at my work and friends of mine commute there daily.

The clouds yesterday in Tulsa before the storm in Joplin were so ominous... giant towering white fluffy clouds that were moving VERY fast. I took these pics of them yesterday just an hour and a half or so before they became the Joplin tornado supercell:

http://imageshack.us/f/862/cloud1.jpg/

The bottom of the cloud for scale: http://imageshack.us/f/12/cloud2is.jpg/ you can enlarge them some by clicking on them.

And I'm unplugging my comp now cus Tulsa is under a tornado watch at the moment.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2011/joplin_tornado/joplin_tornado_14.jp...

Time...

Joplin, Mo., May 23, 2011
People look at the remains of houses after a tornado hit Joplin, Mo., on May 22. The tornado killed more than 100 people and damaged the southwestern Missouri city's hospital and school. It tore a path 1 mile (1.6 km) wide and 4 miles (6.4 km) long, destroying homes and businesses.