2011 Joplin Tornado

This video highlights the path of destruction of the tornado and the human toll of the storm. It features interviews with Joplin residents who lived through the storm and takes you on a tour of what is left of the city.

What Went Wrong?

Picture of the 2011 Joplin Tornado. Chosen to show the large size of the tornado.

What Happened?

On Sunday, May 22nd, 2011, an EF-5 tornado tore through the city of Joplin, Missouri. At approximately 5:17PM that day, the Weather Forecast Office in Springfield, Missouri issued a tornado warning with 19 minutes of lead time before the tornado was to enter Joplin (Edgell, 2011). With just under 20 minutes to prepare, residents of Joplin were alerted to the storm by sirens. At 5:41PM, the first sightings of the tornado were beginning to be reported. The storm produced an EF-5 (greater than 200 mph) tornado over Joplin (NOAA, 2012). The tornado path was 22 miles long, and was EF-4 to EF-5 strength for 6 miles (Israel, 2011). The storm was three-quarters of a mile wide with a 300-yard-wide hurricane-like eye (Israel, 2011). This storm along with others generated additional tornadoes, wind damage and flash flooding across far southwest Missouri. At 7:30PM, the first report of confirmed dead came in at an estimated 22 people. By the end of the tornado, 161 people had died, over 1000 injured, and around 8,000 structures were left badly damaged in the Joplin area (Edgell, 2011). The tornado damaged or destroyed 7,500 residences and 500 businesses, displaced 9,200 people, affected 5,000 employees, and generated 3 million cubic yards of debris (Karimi, 2016).

Picture of the timeline and path of the EF-5 Tornado that struck Joplin

Image of the St. John's Regional Medical Center. Chosen to show the severity of the storm that ripped through the city.

The Joplin tornado is the deadliest single tornado since modern record keeping began in 1950 and is ranked as the 7th deadliest in U.S. history. According to a federal assessment, however, a majority of Joplin residents ignored the tornado sirens and did not seek shelter (Currier, 2012). The NOAA found that instead of seeking shelter, most residents were self-assessing their own risk by looking outside or watching television broadcasts. Some Joplin residents expressed confusion over hearing two different tornado warning sirens in the 30 minutes before the tornado hit the city. City officials and weather reporting agencies are looking to find more effective ways to send out storm warnings, including sirens with different sounds, standardized color coding on television or online to distinguish the severity of storms and using social networking tools and mobile technology to provide more specific information on weather threats (Currier, 2012). Another tool that would have been helpful in reducing the amount of damage that was caused by the tornado would have been to mandate the building of safety rooms (reinforced rooms for safety during sever weather events) in houses. It is interesting to note, the city of Joplin decided to not require builders install these safety rooms in the houses being rebuilt due to damage done by the tornado (Smith and Sutter, 2013).  The city government believed that it was up to the individual businesses and residents to decide to create these rooms if they wanted them. The government believed that the extra cost of building these rooms would slow down the rebuilding of the city remove bureaucratic barriers (Smith and Sutter, 2013). 

Citations

Currier, Joel. “Joplin Residents Ignored Tornado Warnings, Report Says.” STLtoday.com, 25 Jan. 2012, www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/joplin-residents-ignored-tornado-warnings-report-says/article_66662dc8-e3b3-11e0-9262-0019bb30f31a.html. 

Edgell, Holly. “Timeline: The May 22, 2011 Joplin Tornado.” KSHB, KSHB, 22 May 2016, www.kshb.com/news/state/missouri/timeline-the-may-22-2011-tornado-that-laid-waste-to-joplin-mo. 

Israel, Brett. “Catastrophic Joplin Tornado Offers Lessons on Storm Warnings.” LiveScience, Purch, 20 Sept. 2011, www.livescience.com/16141-joplin-tornado-official-report.html. 

Karimi, Faith. “Joplin, Missouri, Tornado: 5 Years Later.” CNN, Cable News Network, 22 May 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/05/22/us/joplin-tornado-anniversary/index.html. 

NOAA. “Remembering Joplin Tornado.” National Weather Service, US Department of Commerce , 22 May 2012, www.weather.gov/news/052212-joplin. 

Smith, Daniel J., and Daniel Sutter. “Response and Recovery after the Joplin Tornado: Lessons Applied and Lessons Learned.” The Independent Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 2013, pp. 165–188. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24563306. Accessed 12 Dec. 2020.