Wednesday, December 15, 2021
On May 22, 2011, an EF-5 tornado cut through Joplin, Missouri and killed 158 people, despite warnings that reached almost everyone in its path.
On this day in 2011, a little after 5:30 on a Sunday evening, an EF-5 tornado nearly a mile wide entered the southwest edge of Joplin, Missouri and tracked directly through the middle of the city. Winds exceeded 200 miles per hour. It killed 158 people, injured more than a thousand, destroyed about 4,380 homes and took out a hospital. It remains the deadliest single tornado in the United States since modern records began in 1950.
The Weather Service reviewed its own performance afterward and found that the warning had worked. Sirens sounded, alerts went out, and most residents received them. What the review documented was the delay in between. The majority of people sought a second confirmation, from a window, a phone, a neighbor or a television, before they moved. In a city where the tornado arrived within about 20 minutes of the warning, those minutes were the whole margin.
That finding changed how warnings are worded, and it left households a plain assignment. The alert is the trigger, not the invitation to check whether it is real. Deciding now which interior room or shelter the family goes to is the substance of what to do when a tornado hits, and the days after are their own project, which is why the aftermath of a tornado deserves a plan of its own.
