The horror of the Joplin tornado is the subject of a new documentary film, released nearly 14 years after the twister struck Missouri with cataclysmic force, ripping into a hospital, destroying neighborhoods and killing around 160.
“You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing,” Kerry Sachetta, then the Joplin High School principal, told The Associated Press on the evening of May 22, 2011, after the school was destroyed.
“That’s really what it looked like,” Sachetta said.
As he spoke on that dreadful night, fires from gas leaks burned across town. The EF-5 twister, then the single deadliest in six decades, packed winds of 200 mph (320 kph). At times, it was nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide. Left in its wake was a hellscape of cars crushed like soda cans and shaken residents roaming streets in search of missing family members. About 7,500 homes were damaged or destroyed.
“The Twister: Caught in the Storm” was released last week by Netflix following a recent spate of deadly storms that have unleashed tornadoes, blinding dust storms and wildfires.
Hospital became a disaster zone
Some of the most startling damage in Joplin was at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, where staff had only moments to hustle patients into the hallway before the 367-bed hospital was knocked off its foundation.
Flying debris blew out windows and disabled the hospitals’ exposed generators, causing ventilators to stop working. The winds also scattered X-rays and medical records around 75 miles (121 kilometers) away.
Five patients and one visitor died in the immediate aftermath. And other patients later died of injuries they suffered in the storm.
On the morning after the storm, Dr. Jim Riscoe told the AP that some members of his emergency room staff showed up after the tornado with injuries of their own but worked through the night anyway.
“It’s a testimony to the human spirit,” Riscoe said, comparing the scene to a nuclear disaster. “Cars had been thrown like playing cards. Power lines were sparking. I couldn’t believe it.”
The building was so badly damaged it had to be razed the following year.
Recent grads and nursing home residents among the dead
The deaths from the storm were so numerous that a makeshift morgue was set up next to a football stadium in Joplin. Hundreds of others were injured in the city of 53,000.
Among the dead was 18-year-old Will Norton who was headed home from his high school graduation when he was sucked out of his family’s SUV through the sunroof. His father desperately held on to his legs. Norton’s body was found five days later in a nearby pond.
In the following years, his family kept his room as it was: an open pack of chewing gum, his trademark mismatched socks, his computer and the green screen that helped earn him a YouTube following for his travel chronicles.
“It’s a little comfort to go in there, go back in time and remember how it was,” his father, Mark Norton, said close to the five-year anniversary.
Around a dozen died in a single nursing home after the tornado tossed four vehicles, including a full-size van, into the building. Those who survived were scattered to nursing homes in four states, their records and medications blown away. Widespread phone outages then complicated efforts to locate the residents, some of whom had dementia.
Officials still disgree about the final death toll. The federal storm center says 158 died while local officials count the deaths of three additional people, including a person struck by lightning after the tornado blew through the city.
Schools were devastated but persisted
The tornado forced school officials to end the spring term nine days early. Six school buildings were destroyed, including the high school. Seven other buildings were badly damaged.
The district scrambled to rebuild with federal funds, donations, insurance money and a $62 million bond, cobbling together a hodgepodge of temporary locations while construction was underway. Seniors and juniors took classes in a converted big-box store in a shopping mall, while freshmen and sophomores went to school in a building across town.
Then-President Barack Obama was the commencement speaker during the high school’s 2012 commencement and then-Vice President Joe Biden attended the 2014 dedication of the new high school, calling the community the “heart and soul of America.”
The dedication included two live eagles, the school’s mascot. During the first home football game after the tornado, a single eagle flew over the football field and became a symbol signifying that the students, like the bird who returns to the same nesting spot each year, would come home again.
