Joplin, May 22nd 2011
17:41
Getting the Call:
My family and I were at home that night eating a wonderful meal of steaks that we had just cooked on our new Gas Grill we purchased that day at Wal-Mart for our new home. It was a typical night, nothing special that I recall. We had done a couple of average, every day calls with the Fire District that day. Then my phone rings the same time I get a text. It is our “Iris” system at St. Johns telling us they need every “EMT and Medic” to call their supervisor. A hospital in Joplin has been hit by a tornado and they need help.
Still not grasping what my future held, I sent a text to Chief Berndt and turned the channel on the TV to see if I could get an idea of what was going on. The news had nothing other than typical weather alerts for SW Missouri, with a very large storm that was “Tornado” warned going through Joplin area. Chief Berndt replied back that we were going to send people, they have activated the “State-Wide Mutual Aid” system. That is about the point I realized, this must be a big deal.
It was a warm / humid day, so I had recently taken a shower to clean up before this all started. I changed into my BDU’s and Western t-shirt. The page went out to meet at Station 7 for deployment. I noticed the weather was deteriorating and the storm that struck Joplin was now heading our way. I drove my staff car to 7, where Chief Berndt was in his office trying to get information about where we were going and what was going on. I did a correction on the radio advising that the deployment was going to be TRT members only. Team members started showing up.
It was that time I had to call my boss, who was in Iowa visiting family, to see if I could miss work the next day. After some logistical issues, I got the OK to go. We still didn’t know exactly what we had, so I turned our TV on in the lobby of our headquarters where on KY3 we saw the pictures of St. Johns hospital completely devastated. Yep, this is going to be a big deal. Oh yeah, that tornado is coming our way. Chief Berndt was still on the phone, but was able to tell me Chief Martin from Branson Fire was going and I would be coordinating our team with him.
I started gathering my equipment and having my team get theirs in order as well. I also grabbed our “duty” laptop that had wireless so I could communicate during travel. Chief Martin arrived and we had a brief debate as to weather we should wait the storm out, or go. We decided to go. Our Brush truck and Engine went to the gas station to top off while Branson’s Engine was on its way from town. Southern Stone was also going to convoy with us and was on the way too. It was going to be Chief Martin’s staff car, Brush 29 with the Rescue trailer, Engine 62, Branson Engine 10, Southern Stone 6013 and 601’s staff car. We decided that TRT members that were also DMAT members would stay behind since a hospital was know to be hit. We loaded up and hit the road.
Convoy on the Road:
We didn’t make it but about a couple miles up the road where all the apparatus was rallying when the front edge of the storm hit us. We were hearing radio reports of a Tornado on the ground just north (2 miles) going through the “Saddle Brooke” area. Again, we pushed forward after dispatch told us they were not receiving calls about damage. We found out later that the same tornado that struck Joplin had crossed the road right in front of us. It was rated an EF-2 at that point. Let me tell you…it was a little windy. Bad move to travel through that storm. We made it fine, but we had winds going in all directions and heavy rain, which made travel very slow and difficult. Just south of Ozark, we punched through the storm into something I have never seen before. The colors of the sun mixed with the storm to the south were mind blowing. Everything was so brilliant and bright, yet a very sharp line of dark with lightning striking through a double rainbow to our east.
By this time I had the Internet up and going and was watching the NWS and looking at google maps to plot our way to our future. The storms were still firing to our west, and you could tell by radar that “home” was going to be in for a long night without us. We had been suffering from severe flooding over the last couple of months and had just started to recover. The gates on the dam were finally closed and our little disaster was on the mend. We knew the situation was fragile, and the radar was not on the side of the families affected by the water levels that we knew were going to be on the way up again.
I follow on facebook the Los Angeles County USAR team that deploys internationally for disasters. They always post updates and let you know where the team is and what they are doing. I decided that I would do the same thing on my profile, since a lot of family members of our team were facebook friends. I was also checking KY3’s website trying to get info about what we were dealing with in Joplin. It was starting to paint a very sad, devastating picture.
Just like in any large disaster, there were communication problems right off the bat. Chief Wolven of Southern Stone was already in the Joplin area visiting family and at the 50th street staging area. We were receiving orders through Chief Berndt to go to the 30th street staging area. After some back and forth, we finally got it worked out to go to 50th to meet Chief Wolven and deliver his staff car that was also traveling with us. During the trip down I-44, several other departments heading to Joplin for the mutual aid as well passed us. Chief Martin made the decision to find a gas station before the staging area and top everyone off so we would be ready to work.
We were receiving reports that I-44 was now closed at 71 highway, so I was trying to find us another way into the staging area. After looking at google maps, we decided to go south to Diamond, then west again to the staging area. We made it to 71 highway were they indeed had the road closed. We went south about a ½ mile to a gas station to top off.
When we arrived at the gas station, it was packed. I mean packed. There were 2 things other than the mass of cars that caught my attention right away. The first was a SUV that didn’t have any windows and looked like it had taken multiple shotgun blasts from every angle. The other was a mini van in about the same shape, except it looked like it had rolled. Both were on the road drivable. When the people at the gas station saw the Convoy roll in, they parted the waters and gave us instant access to the pumps. These people knew what we were going to. It still was not clear to us other than “bad”. I talked to several people around about directions, but people were not sure about roads being closed. 2 MSHP units arrived and Chief Martin talked them into leading us to the staging area.
Tanks full, and on the road again. This time going north on 71 through Webb City and south on Main. Looking at the maps and talking it out, we had several conversations on the radio to the trooper about this not being where we are suppose to be. He assured us we would arrive at the staging area in due time. I think he just wanted to show off. I say this because Main passes right through the heart of the damage path. Now, we are starting to see why we are here. Complete, I will say it again, complete destruction. Use whatever metaphor you want, but after 20 years in the business and responding to multiple tornados in the past, this was the worst times 1000. There were fire trucks lining the street on both sides. None of them were from Joplin. I kind of thought, where are those guys? I would find out later they were a little busy…to say the very least.
We slowly passed through town and out of the damage path and pulled into a school off of 50th. We had everyone stay with the trucks and Ted (Chief Martin) and I went to check in with the staging officer. It was a relief to walk in and recognize Travis Trent as the staging officer. Travis is a Chief with Logan Rogersville fire and also part of the “incident support team” who obviously was trying to help run the show. There were no less that 50 pieces of apparatus in the parking lot from departments all around the area, including Oklahoma. There were a lot of names I did not recognize.
Here is the part where I will get in trouble. Let me say for the record: I respect the volunteer firefighters and the commitment they give to their communities. They are the true spirit of what volunteering is all about. I, however, come from an area fortunate enough to have large budgets, excellent training programs, and equipment that make our job easier. When Joplin called for help, these guys came. I believe this is where our State Wide Mutual Aid system fails to some point. Most of these departments do not have the equipment that Joplin needed at that point and time. Its not their fault, they came when asked. We brought the equipment for the type of incident we were dispatched to. Collapse rescue.
Travis recognized this right away, which is why we got an assignment within 30 minutes of arriving at the staging area. We received an assignment before the one we were going to go to, but it was for an ammonia leak at a plant. We did not have Hazmat equipment with us. We did consider it though. So, we were the last ones to check in at staging, and the first ones to deploy. I’m sure that made some of those other 50 departments happy that had been there 3 or more hours. It was at that point; Southern Stone split off of us and with Chief Wolven started deploying as and Engine Company. We rallied the troops and briefed on our first mission.
Church with a man Trapped:
Our first mission was to go to a church at the corner of Connecticut and 20th. There was a fire department on scene already reporting they could not make access to the basement without shoring equipment. They had a man trapped. I was thinking, “This is right up our alley”. Remember Chief Duckworth…don’t think. With the combination of Ted’s GPS and google maps, we worked our way through several roadblocks, where law enforcement was trying to control traffic. We had heard scuttle of looting and large gas leaks all around town. We had to serpentine through power lines and avoid large chunks of debris everywhere.
I had my window rolled down on the way to our mission and I asked Ted “Can you hear that”? It was complete darkness. Pitch black, like shutting the lights off inside of a cave darkness. There was this sound of “beeping” of different pitches and rhythms all around the damage path. For those of you that witnessed 9/11, after the towers collapsed, the “PASS” devices that firefighter wore were going off and it was the only thing you could hear. It was just like that. We had a discussion about maybe a fire station had been hit and that is what it was, but after a while we realized they were smoke detectors going off. These things were going off everywhere. If you can imagine hundreds of homes with smoke detectors sounding, welcome to our creepy world.
I should introduce you to the rest of the team as we were grouped for the event. Ted Martin BFD was command; I was assigned the Rescue group leader. Under me was comprised of Team 1 with Captain Paul Harkins as team leader, Jason Gagnipain as the apparatus operator and their firefighter. Our logistics guys from Western were in Brush 29. Tony Haworth and Mike Majors. Team 2 with Engine 62 was Kevin Rein, team leader, Katie White, Eric Eighmy, and Jerry Duncan.
We arrived on scene, or so we thought. The GPS stopped us at the right address, but the right address was the wrong address. Again, disaster communication at its best. After talking with some citizens, they pointed us to where they thought the church we were going to was at. Everyone is doing their own thing and we have no idea who was requesting the shoring equipment. We arrived on a street with 3 churches next to a large building that was annihilated. We realized later, that building was the High School. It looked more like Beirut High School than Joplin High School.
Again, we were trying to determine which of these 3 churches was where we were supposed to be. We found Logan Rogersville Heavy Rescue searching houses along the damage path. We checked with them and they didn’t know where we were supposed to go either. They tried calling Travis, but cell service was completely gone in that part of town. We moved to the other side of the street where we found a Police Command Post. They had no clue either. We decided we were going to search these churches because we were reasonably sure we were at the right location. We worked our way through the furthest south church. We set up our own incident command and ran teams with me as the Rescue coordinator. We held all but 1 team and myself at the first church. We realized quickly, this church did not contain a basement. We were at the wrong building. We found a couple of guys walking around who attended that church and they said everyone had made it out. Time to move on.
While the team and I were looking around the first church, Ted found the one we were supposed to be at. One Building north of where we were. The parking lot was mostly clear, so we parked everyone there and talked to the department that had been there before us. Turns out, no one known to be trapped, they just couldn’t make access to a second floor office space. Disaster communication. They did advise us of a natural gas leak that was going on in that church as well. About that time, Joplin public works arrived and we talked to them about getting the gas shut off. We began a quick surface search of the church and located almost immediately two victims. Unfortunately, both were obviously deceased. They were both in the area of the sanctuary and were removed to the parking lot by the assisting fire department that was already there. For the love of me, I never figured out what department they were with.
We finished a search of what we could and determined it was mostly a large 1-story structure with a small area that was 2 stories high. With public works, we were able to stop the gas leak and began searching the rest of the building. Luckily, no one else was found. Then, literally out of nowhere, Paula Morehouse with KY3 and her cameraman were right there out of the darkness. Took us hours to arrive here, they just popped in. I called Ted to tell him they wanted an interview. Ted said to go ahead and give them one…thanks Ted. The interview went smooth, about 5 minutes long, which if you saw the footage on TV was a whopping 3 seconds. This was 3 seconds that my wife had to play over and over for my 2-year-old son who had seen “daddy” on TV. Thank goodness for DVR! Very quickly, the Coroners office arrived and took the two victims away. We quickly searched another church which was not as damaged, then gathered with our apparatus. We got our Convoy together and headed back to the 50th staging area.
Staging Area Moved:
We arrived back at staging and reported to Travis. Still about 50 or so departments in staging, and I’m not sure if it was the same ones or not. We had everyone rehab while we waited for our next assignment. Word came in, for the life of me I don’t know who made this decision that they were going to move the entire staging area from a perfectly good school, all the way through the damage path to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). Ted and I just kind of looked at each other and decided we would be the final act of the parade. Found some food they had been hiding and had a quick bite.
Surprisingly, it did not take as long to get going as I thought it was going to. We had a HUGE convoy of apparatus headed down Main to the EOC. We saw hundreds of people working to save lives and had another view of the absolute devastation this twister delivered. The staging area backed up as we guessed it would and it took a while to park all those apparatus. This time, we went into Fire Station 1 and the staging officer there was a Battalion Chief with Joplin Fire. We checked in and they actually had quite a bit of food and beverages for everyone there. There was no running water however, so the bathrooms with over 100 firefighters were, well let’s just keep it simple, gross. It was about 3 in the morning at this point.
I haven’t really said anything about time till this point frankly because I never really looked. Joplin Engine 1 was sitting behind the station. It had taken a pretty good hit. All the windows were broken, the grill was gone, the ladder was twisted, and the light bar was not so bright any more. I heard through scuttle, those boy rode the storm out in the truck then responded it in to help people. I’ll bet it was a little breezy with no windshield.
Ted and I poked around a little and interacted with other firefighters we knew from departments in our area. We started getting bored and since I have been to Joplin Station 1 several times, we took our own little tour. We “accidentally” stumbled into the EOC. The first person I saw was Shea. Shea is with Greene County OEM and works with my wife quite a bit. We chatted for a bit about the situation and then from the back of the EOC I hear someone yell my name out.
I looked back and saw one of my long time friends and Battalion Chief for Joplin Fire Tim Woodward. He was working the operations part of the EOC. I went to him, shook his hand and asked him about his family. I knew they lived out of town, but it’s just something you say when you don’t know what to say. He looked tired, as well he should. I did not envy him at all knowing his city in a matter of a few minutes had changed forever. We caught up for a few minutes and he said the plan was going to be to wait till daybreak to get people from the staging area back out for another search. The first search was rapid, the second would be much more thorough. It was now about 4 in the morning. We went back upstairs and told our crew to get some sleep, we would deploy first thing in the morning. Ted and I went back to his staff car. After updating our status online and checked the weather, I took a quick catnap.
Around 530 am, I awoke and noticed it was starting to get light outside. Ted was stirring and I walked back to Station 1. I found some food and drink and had my morning breakfast. I wondered back down to the command post where Shea invited us to the morning briefing. I called Ted and told him, he found some breakfast too. While I was in the EOC again, Tim asked if we have any dogs with us. Since we are a small USAR team, we did not. He told me he was going to find us some to use for the day. I was pretty excited about that.
About that time, I ran into Mitch. Mitch is a friend of my family. The Duckworths and the Randals have grown up together. I use to hang out with Mitch’s little brother Chad. He was my childhood best friend. Mitch was tired. I didn’t need to ask him to know that. Mitch has just recently been promoted to Chief of the Department. He recognized me and immediately thanked me for coming to help. I asked how he was doing. He and his wife were at a graduation ceremony before the storm hit. His house is leveled. He lost everything. I asked if he lost any equipment other than the Engine. He told me Station 2 and Station 4 were gone along with the apparatus. He also told me that he reported to the fire station before the storm hit with his wife. He pulled everyone off of emergency calls when the warning went out. Mitch saved his firefighters lives by doing that. There surely would have been fatalities with his men if he didn’t. That decision allowed the department to respond with a full staff to be able to save those hundreds that needed help.
A little surprise came just before briefing when an old Branson Firefighter that took a job with Overland Park Fire a couple of years ago came over to say hi. His name is Jason Kelly. Jason was also a volunteer for Western for a couple of years. Jason has his own business and was in the area after the tornado hit. He was not with Overland Park, but had his gear with him. We invited him to join our team, which he gladly accepted. His buddy that was with him also joined our team; he was an Overland Park firefighter as well. We took on one other additional member that morning when a cousin of Ted showed up. He is the Chief of a small volunteer department that couldn’t send any apparatus, but he gladly showed up in his own car ready to work.
Morning briefing started late about 630 about the time the next set of severe storms was hitting. We were told we would be working, but they did not want to deploy in the severe weather. Waiting game again. The storms hit, and I’m glad we were not out in them. They were pretty rough. I knew we would not be that effective in weather like that, but there was that urge to get to work and help too. That was a hard thing to fight, and I could see the other team members fighting it too. The apparatus bay was filled with at least 200 firefighters during the briefing. They separated us out by type, with USAR being the smallest group. You see why I said the system is flawed. It should have been the other way around.
Ten Square Blocks of Hell:
After the storm was winding down, we got our next assignment. This time, our job was much bigger. They already had the FEMA USAR teams working the big box stores that were leveled, and we were going to get an entire neighborhood. They gave us a grid map and said grid D4 was ours. I asked who else was going to be there searching the grid and Tim just looked at me. He didn’t have to say anything, I get it, we were on our own. At that point, he introduced us to our dog handlers that would be coming with us. Awesome, we were going to get 2 dogs and 4 handlers. Rally the troops, we are on the road again.
This time, our convoy went through the middle of town without police escort. We ran our lights everywhere we traveled so we didn’t get split up. The route we took this time was through the northern part of the city that was untouched. It seemed like business as normal in this part of town. That was until we hit our first checkpoint at 7th and Maiden Lane. We journeyed south to the intersection of Maiden Lane and 26th street. On the way, around 20th street the damage became clear. We passed Joplin Fire Station 2 which was completely leveled. The Engine was still in the station, but it was pretty much flat. The roof had collapsed on top of it and it was clearly not going to make another call.
There was a little park we scouted out on the google maps before we left. It was right at the intersection of 26th and Maiden Lane. This grid is directly across from St. Johns hospital to the north. From that park, 10 blocks north and 10 blocks east was our search grid. I had seen pictures on the Internet of St. Johns, but when I saw it with my own eyes, I literally could not believe what I was seeing. No windows, part of the roof gone, cars stacked up in the parking lot, a medical helicopter on its side in the parking lot. It looked like a building out of Beirut. Then, the panoramic view from our little park, other wise known as our new command post for the day. All I could say was “Holy cow Ted. This is bad. I mean this is really bad”. I know, creative wasn’t it? I would call it almost speechless.
During this time, the “severe” weather had moved out of the area, but a thunderstorm remained. We were just west of these towers that looked like they were about 600 feet tall. They were being struck by lightning with booming thunder about every 30 seconds. I was glad I wasn’t the tallest thing in the area. The rain was heavy, but the team was anxious to get started. We gathered at the back of the staff car, and broke the search grid into a north and south sector. A team would be assigned to each area with a dog and the handlers. We introduced ourselves to the dogs and the handlers, and headed out.
I went with Team 1, which was working the south sector. We decided to start at the farthest part and work our way back to the command post. The other team was going to do the same in their sector. We were going to leave the collapse trailer at the command post so it was central between the 2 teams. We left the command post and headed to Connor and 26th, the farthest east of our grid.
The houses in this area were not even recognizable. There was nothing standing. These were strong old houses. These were the real hardwood floors, plaster and lathe walls, strong wood frame structures. Mostly 1 and 2 story completely flattened. The trees were stripped of all of their bark and most were broken off only a few feet off the ground. Don’t ask me where the rest of the tree was at; they were not in our grid. I heard NWS later talking about a debris ball on radar. Debris was being sucked over 5000 feet into the air. Our trees might be in New Jersey with winds like that.
This moment was very overwhelming for me. I knew I had a good team, and I knew we wanted to do things right. The very first house we started with, we found a fatality. She was mixed in with the debris and her daughter was at the house. We quickly went to work uncovering her and placing her into a body bag. This is where it might get a little graphic for some. This victim did not die a slow death being trapped under rubble. She was violently killed in a very traumatic way. The top of her head was gone from about the jaw line up. She was eviscerated, missing her left hand, her right foot and had huge, deep lacerations over her entire body. The winds had ripped the clothing away.
During briefing, they issued us 6 white body bags and gave instructions not to take the bodies anywhere. We were to mark the bags the best we could and put as many personal belongings with the body we could. The daughter provided us with some pictures and we wrote down as much information as we could. We put it all in the bag, and marked the outside of the bag with the address of the residence. We are less than 10 minutes into this and we are already finding fatalities. I’m starting to think we did not bring enough bags. We comforted the daughter as much as we could. We were instructed to not move the bodies and someone would pick them up. Ted was notified and he started the process. This was very tough on me. I know we are in the “Rescue” window and have a very good chance of finding live victims. We had to press on. The daughter seemed to understand and was just thankful that we took care of her mother. We did press on despite my deep feelings of wanting to stay. If you took one look at our search area, you would have known we had to keep going too.
We weren’t even done with the first victim when a second one was located at the house across the street. There was no family at this house, so the process was repeated to the best of our abilities. The problem was, the debris is mixed with all these houses. We are not sure if pictures, wallets or ID’s belong to these victims. We did the best we could, and counted on the DMORT team to do their work later on. Those guys and gals are amazing. They identify people with 100% certainty. Now we are less than 20 minutes into our search grid, 2 houses, 2 fatalities. This is not going to be a good day.
Dog Gone:
While we were dealing with the first 2 fatalities, we sent the dog and handler on up to start his work. I eventually joined him about 2 houses up from where we were. The dog was running around, with no pattern and no sense of purpose. I have not worked with a lot of “search” dogs before, so I thought it was just me. I was talking to homeowners that survived and was trying to get a good picture on the houses we really needed to focus the dogs on. One of these houses was a couple doors down from the fatalities, and they were pretty sure there was an elderly lady trapped under the debris. The dog started to work the house, but didn’t seem to focus on his job. He was more running around back and forth not hitting on any one particular area.
During this time I took a brief pause to say a little prayer. The lightning moved from those towers and was now hitting everywhere around us. I’m not talking a flash, then a few seconds later a boom. I’m talking artillery coming down on top of you and it did not let up for an hour. Talk about stress. At that point, we were the tallest objects around. The rain was moderate to heavy at times and really starting to make our gear heavy. While I was trying to remember if I signed my life insurance policy, the dog handler finished the house and came up to me and told me he needed to rest his dog. Again, I don’t work with dogs every day, so I thought it was fine. I was also thinking, at this pace, we would be done about the time the cable company finally shows up to make the install at my new house.
While I was asking if the dog had “hit” on anything, the handler seemed a little frustrated. That’s about the time the hard day got a whole lot harder. The handler informed me that his dog was not trained to “search” houses like this. He was a tracking dog, meant to get a sent then follow that sent like a kid lost in the woods. Great. I was also informed that the other dog was also a tracking dog and not a search dog. So after a few choice cuss words in my head and some answered questions by the handler, we decided to take the dogs back to the truck so they didn’t get hurt. They were not going to be any help to us. The handlers did offer to stay with the teams to help search the houses. I did not turn down the help.
We were having trouble getting a hold of Ted, so we sent Tony back to the command post to wake him up. He claims he was on the wrong channel. Team 2 quickly determined they would not need all of their resources in their sector. All the residence north of about 23rd street was damaged but all were standing. We pulled Team 2 to our area due to the extensive damage and amount of structures that needed searched. Ted and Mike went mobile to check out everything North of 23rd and made contact with several residences who did not need any assistance. Team 2 arrived in our sector and we decided to just split the team down the street. One team searched on the left and one searched on the right, which worked out really well for the rest of the day.
It was slow going with the lightning, rain and shear magnitude of damage and debris we were going through. The biggest surprise for me on that first street was when I went onto the porch of a house that was about 75% gone. The roof was collapsed onto the front porch in a lean to style. As I was about to “unlock” the front door with an axe, the lady that lived there threw the door open and scared the crap out of me. She was fine and had rode out the twister in her basement. She did not want to leave her house even though we assured her it was NOT safe to stay there. Looting had been a problem the night before apparently.
Across the street I talked to another homeowner who rode the storm out in his basement. The rest of his house wasn’t even in a pile near the basement. He had been finding his possessions several blocks away. The rest of the street became a little easier as we worked our way north. We regrouped at the intersection, and then started our sweep south on the next street. We were trying to stay focused and do a good job. It was hard to not go fast when you know you have such a hard task of searching hundreds of houses. Like our first street, this was slow going with the amount of damage.
Keep Pushing:
The activity in the other search grids was starting to pick up. We saw Mo. Task Force-1 across 26th street starting to do a sweep with their K-9s. The closer we got to 26th, the more destruction and the harder the searches became. I saw a child’s car seat stuck in the side of a house. It had an “X” on it, which meant it had been searched the night before. I felt sorry for whoever had to look to see if it was occupied. The teams were working at a good pace and I was lagging behind a little talking to people in the neighborhood to see if they needed anything. Surprisingly, most said they did not.
When we got to 26th street, we were notified there was another fatality. This time it was across the street from our grid, but there were no crews working there at that point in time. We decided we would hop out of our grid and take a look. Now, the night before, Joplin public works had front-end loaders, bobcats and whatever else they could get their hands on out in the damage path clearing roads for emergency responders. Unfortunately, they had buried our victim deeper in a pile than he originally was. There is also a good chance he was in the road before they got there. Our guys dug in and pulled him out. The process was repeated with calling command and marking the best we could. We push on.
We are now onto street number 3 and making progress. We are finally getting the hang of this. More and more people are out and about by this time as well. That was making our job easier since the people were being accounted for. On this street, we found several college students helping and elderly couple search through their possessions to try and salvage what they could. People are amazing. There are the looters and the scum who don’t deserve their next meal, and then there are the saints. I witnessed a lot of saints on this deployment. Every time our team would turn around, someone would pull up and just hand us food, or cases of drinking water. They were helping everyday citizens and they were helping us as well. Thank you whoever you are.
The rain was picking up again. Our gear was drenched which just adds weight to our already tired bodies. The teams did and excellent job working the houses. They never complained, and they never said no.
We found one alive! He was located on Murphy Street about 2 blocks north of 26th. He was not in very good shape however. He had a pretty obvious collapsed lung and could not move even a little without gasping for air. The crews cleared debris and we brought our Brush truck up the street to deliver medical equipment. Ted called the EOC and ordered and ambulance. His house was about 80% destroyed and he had had a bad night. After 5 fatalities, this was just the little boost we needed to keep going. It gave everyone hope on the team that we would find more alive. METS ambulance arrived, took over patient care and transported the victim.
Ted called on the radio and told us he was going to try to get us some food. We didn’t argue. We finished searching street 4 when he radioed he was back. We repositioned all of the apparatus about half way down our search grid right on 26th street. All day long there were convoys of emergency vehicles traveling the roadways trying to find their own little spot in the disaster. All the crews worked our way back to the apparatus and met Ted, who had provided us with Dominoes Pizza. He had walked into the local store to buy it for us, and they would not have any of that. 10 pizza’s for our guys free. Thank you Dominoes, you have a lifelong customer in me now!
The tornado in Joplin was a multiple vortex tornado. That is where several little tornados spin around a primary center. This street was a perfect example of that. The teams were tired and working their way back to the apparatus, so Jerry and I went on up the street where you could see extensive damage to a large building. No other houses that surrounded it had that much damage, just the church. To me, this was one of those little vortex tornados that decided to take a detour. All the cars in the parking lot were missing their windows. The sanctuary was completely collapsed and the entire south wall of the church was gone. It was a 2 story on the rear, but pretty easy to search considering it was exposed. I do not however know what happened to the roof, but I do know it was nowhere near the church. While looking into the windows that were intact, Jerry was surprised by a worker in the church who was guarding it from looters. It was quit humorous to see an ex Army Ranger jump back when confronted with and elderly man.
As Jerry and I walked around the church, we came upon a water treatment facility. I cringed a little when I saw a small masonry building that was collapsed within the complex. It was very close to the church, but across the street. To our advantage, a public works employee drove by and saw us poking around. Luckily this was a storage building that was unoccupied and did not house Chlorine or any other hazardous materials. Could you imagine a Chlorine leak on top of and EF-5 twister? Jerry and I headed to meet up with the others for lunch.
Just about the time we were getting ready to gather for a break, another bystander from across the street had located another victim. Springfield Fire was working that grid, but we could see them several blocks away. We went over and helped the bystanders clear the debris. The body removal process repeated, as I’m sure was occurring all over the disaster path with many other responders. I made contact with Springfield; they came over to help and to take over since it was their grid.
We now gathered at our apparatus and enjoyed about a 20-minute lunch break. The thing I love about Western and Branson, they didn’t need any more. In fact, that was probably too much of a break to most of the team, they were ready to move on, and so we did.
Lunch Break Over:
The next street was relatively quiet search wise. No victims located, and most people were accounted for. About this time a young Marine, who had reported to the area with his unit to help, joined us. The unit was instructed to do whatever was needed, and when he saw us working, he asked if he could tag along. At this point, you could not have paid me money to turn down help. We talked to homeowners, neighbors, family members and friend that were all there searching through the debris to salvage whatever they could. The stories of survival were amazing. We came upon one house where a blind man lived that refused to leave. Can you imaging riding out an EF-5 tornado blind? We strongly encouraged him to leave, but he refused. His house was about 50% gone with no roof. That was one tough blind man.
I was bouncing back and forth between houses and Ted’s command vehicle at this point. We decided to close up the command post and keep all of our apparatus together on 26th street due to the increase in traffic and media that was wondering around. Across the street from our new command post, Ted and I watched the dogs of Mo Task Force-1 doing a search of a house. The house was originally 2 stories tall. It had been completely blown away, leaving only the basement exposed. As if that wasn’t enough, the car was picked up and thrown into the basement where the occupant were believed to have been seeking shelter. The dogs were getting hits of victims, but we could not stick around to watch the conclusion since our grid was picking up again.
Very soon after our encounter with our blind gentlemen, I was talking to some neighbors and a family walking down the street confronted me. There were three of them, and you could tell without asking, they had lived a lifetime last night. They looked very sad, very tired and most of all, very persistent. I asked them if they needed anything and a lady handed me a picture of a teenage boy, his name was Will Norton.
The boy had graduated high school last night we he was driving home with another family member. The tornado hit, and they were directly in its path. The vehicle rolled over several times, and went airborne. Even though the driver had a grip on the boy, he was sucked out of the sunroof and lost in the storm. We tried to recall all the vehicles that we searched on the way and none of them matched the description of the boys. The family continued their walk in a slow methodical fashion down the street, clutching to hope for a miracle. I learned later on that week, they found the boy’s body in a pond very near the car he was in. He was completely covered in debris and had perished that night.
We were working at a pretty good pace back towards the command post. The vehicles had to be repositioned every couple of blocks so we didn’t get too far away from our equipment if we needed it. 26th street was starting to get crowded with people. Some were there to help; others were just in the way. The media was arriving by the dozens now, mostly parked near St. Johns. Every network you could think of had a truck there, CNN, MSNBC, The Weather Channel, KY3, and the list goes on and on. They all had their multimillion dollar vehicles up and running with satellite feed, giving the latest on the biggest news story of the day; Joplin! The rain had let up by this point, but was still persistent with a soft, irritating rain shower. Our gear was saturated and heavy, making even walking down the road difficult.
Al Roker:
I was directly across from St. Johns when I was interviewing a neighbor about his status and his fellow homeowners in the area. Other Team 2 members where doing the same. The stories matched up. Neighbors saw a man come home last night about 5 minutes before the twister hit. They did not see him leave and his car was still, well, it was in a field several hundred feet away. They were sure he was home. I called Ted and told him we would be doing extensive search operations on a 2 story, wood frame home that was a complete collapse of the majority of the structure. There were already some guys digging by hand in the house when we arrived. Our guys pitched in and tried to make sense of the layout of the house. After an EF-5, that’s like building a house with poker cards, knocking it down and trying to decide which card was on top.
This sudden flourish of activity on this house was clearly visible from the roadway, and almost a stampede of media came running over to set up their cameras in hopes of getting that prize winning shot of a live victim being pulled from the clutches of death. I had no problem with them being there per say, I just didn’t want them too close to my guys working the pile causing a distraction. They all agreed and the Team continued to work. By this time, the chainsaws were out and the Team was dismantling the structure piece by piece in hopes of finding our man. A local construction crew was on site pitching in with a bobcat. We would cut large pieces of the structure away, and they would pull it free giving us access to other rooms of this demolished old house.
We were live on TV all over the nation. There were several cameras there with a pretty large crowd of media on site by this time. I was pretty focused on watching out for my guys and their safety, especially using power tools around civilians. I was also watching the debris for shifting, or changes that would alert me to a safety issue. About that time, I looked over and realized that standing 10 feet away from me doing a live broadcast was Al Roker from the Today Show. Great! In my head I yelled “holy crap! That’s Al Roker!!!” Thankfully after watching the footage my wife recorded, I did not show that face on live TV. The Team did a great job of staying safe and working at a blistering pace to gain access to every square inch of this house. Surprisingly, we did not find anyone. We were pretty sure with the reports we had, we would find him one way or another. I saw on the news a couple of days later; Al Roker was talking to the neighbor about him. He apparently crawled out of the rubble on his own and walked to his family’s house. Good for him.
This particular house was time consuming and while we were focused on it, the other team finished the search grid. No other victims were located. We all made our way back to our apparatus and formed our convoy back to the staging area. My wife, who works for Taney County Emergency Management had been posting all morning about the rainfall amounts in our county. Our county is already flooded and had seen record lake levels and water release from the White River Dams. Ted and I talked about this on our way back to staging. The Chief of Branson Fire had just retired, and Ted was running the department until a replacement was hired. We decided that if there were plenty of people left in the staging area, we would ask to be released to return home. We wanted to make sure our home was protected before we committed any one else back to the Joplin incident.
The convoy arrived at the staging area and the teams went for some food and a restroom break while Ted and I went to check in with staging. Tim was with the staging officer when we reported in and we explained the situation back home. Joplin at that point was keeping up with the work and already had 3 FEMA USAR teams in the city as well. We told them we would be back if we didn’t need to stay home. I shook hands with Tim and we rallied the troops for our drive home.
Going Home:
The radar showed that rain was still pounding Taney County and my wife was still posting increased releases on the dams. The drive home was a quiet one. I had not been that tired in a long time. Ted had the convoy stop in Mount Vernon and bought everyone a frosty beverage (Coke) for the ride home. I could not keep my eyes open. I found my self-drifting off every few miles. I did not think it was fair to Ted to sleep while he drove, and did my best to keep my eyes open.
I can honestly say I am a changed man after my 24 hours in Joplin. I saw images with my eyes that I will never be able to express with words. Over 8000 homes were destroyed, over 160 people lost their lives and thousands were injured. The damage path was over 18 miles long and up to a mile wide in parts. There was a 6-mile damage path through the City of Joplin alone. Debris from the storm was found up to 70 miles away, mostly x-rays from St. Johns that had been sucked out of the building. St. Johns hospital was moved 4 inches on its foundation. I saw the absolute best in people, giving everything they had to pitch in and help. I heard stories of miracle survivors, of heroes laying down their lives protecting others. I heard stories of courage during the worst that Mother Nature could deliver. I heard stories of tragedy, of entire families wiped out, and of families that are just starting their lives together abruptly stopped before it even got going. I was a witness to the destructive force of an EF-5 Tornado, the most powerful winds on the planet. Pictures cannot describe the sights that we saw, the absolute destruction we were a part of.
I know Joplin will rebuild. I know they will recover from this event that changed their city forever. I have friends and family in Joplin and I know what kind of people they are. Before the week was even over, people were rebuilding. Volunteers from all over saturated Joplin for weeks after the storm, lending a hand any way they could. President Obama attended a Memorial 1 week after the storm hit and dedicated federal assistance to them. Even though I live almost 2 hours away, Joplin will now always be a part of who I am. I am proud of my Team, and I know they worked harder than they will ever get credit for. I have an urge to go back to Joplin and help out some more. I don’t know how, or in what capacity, but I’m pretty sure I will return.
