In Joplin, it's taken a full decade, and some residents are healing still.įor NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Joplin, Mo. MORRIS: Anger that can worsen as the recovery drags on because something as profound as a tornado doesn't heal itself in a year or two. And then in the days and the weeks and months that come where you're looking for things that you can't find and you realize, oh, that's gone - and then dealing with the insurance, finding a new home and then this - that fear. STOUT: You know, you're scared, and you're thankful to be alive. And Tiffany Stout says her heart aches for Mayfield tornado victims. MORRIS: But that realization is hard-won. And you don't have control over everything.
There's an awareness that life is precious and short, and you control what you control, prepare for the future. GRAVES: I think there's a psychological awareness across this community. MORRIS: Graves says that kind of environmental hit or shared trauma can show up in higher suicide and drug abuse rates. He says that trauma can make people more vulnerable.ĬHARLES GRAVES: And so because this was such a massive trauma and so many people were exposed, that is an environmental hit to them. MORRIS: Joplin psychiatrist Charles Graves calls her response normal and says that the old adage what doesn't kill you makes you stronger doesn't apply here. And keep it together, and let's be logical.
STOUT: You can look around the room when you're gathered there and know who's been through something like this because I know I have to talk to myself like, OK, breathe. They stick out when there's a tornado watch at work. MORRIS: Tiffany Stout says it's easy to tell people who survived the tornado. He - those both two survived the tornado. And inside, I have my blanket that I liked to have when I was a kid, and then I have Pooh bear. And I have it right over here, so it's just this little backpack. But Allie Stout says she still gets nervous when it's stormy, and she keeps her most important possessions close at hand.ĪLLIE: My tornado bag is what I like to call it. MORRIS: Fast-forward 10 1/2 years, and the tiny girl caught in the imaginary whirlwind is now a confident, athletic 14-year-old. And it's blasting off, and we have to lie on the ground (ph). She called it playing tornado.ĪLLIE STOUT: We spin around in circles, and we get in the house and we lie down. And like many children here, in the weeks following, she relived the storm over and over again. Stout's daughter, Allie, was just 3 when the tornado struck. Worse yet, she says, her children lost their innocence. Like more than 9,000 of her fellow citizens, she lost most of her belongings. MORRIS: When she crawled from the wreckage covered in mud, splinters and insulation, her neighborhood as she knew it had vanished. You know, you kind of have an out-of-body experience. And I could feel us coming off the ground, and Shane had his arms over the top of us trying to hold us down. TIFFANY STOUT: It was almost instantly the roof came off of our house. She was wedged in a hallway with her husband, Shane, and their two small children. Tiffany Stout, a human resources director here, narrowly survived. MORRIS: You have to understand the terror of that evening. But Micklethwaite says even all these years later, the pain still remains fresh. Now it looks tidy, new buildings and small trees growing between stretches of open space. Ten years ago, the view from here was heaps of crumpled, splintered rubble stretching for miles. She's standing on a rise built on the wreckage of a hospital destroyed in that storm. MORRIS: Ashley Micklethwaite was president of Joplin School Board when the tornado struck. Visiting Joplin now, it's kind of hard to tell - that is, unless you know what to look for.ĪSHLEY MICKLETHWAITE: If you're from here and you look out over the landscape, I still see the scars. The storm took 161 lives and destroyed $3 billion worth of property. But a Sunday evening tornado, May of 2011, mowed down and chewed up fully a third of this largely working-class city.
Frank Morris of our member station KCUR returned.įRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: Lead and zinc mining built Joplin, Mo. Over a decade ago, they were hit by one of the worst tornadoes in U.S. That is something that residents in Joplin, Mo., just a few hundred miles west, know firsthand. Survivors of the recent Kentucky tornadoes are starting to rebuild, which can take many years or even decades.
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