MJW155

A lot of people I've talked to aren't rebuilding because they say it's going to take a long time and they "can't stand to see it every day". The lots are selling though .

I don't blame them. I know if the town I grew up in got destroyed and 100+ people died, I'd get out too. The constant reminder would be too hard to deal with on a daily basis.

I have friends that lived in Homestead during Andrew and moved up to Ft. Lauderdale/Coral Springs and have never been back to Homestead since.

I've wondered that too. I would have expected the death toll to actually be higher after seeing all the destruction. It was 5:30 PM on a Sunday evening and people would have been either heading to church, out eating, out shopping, or at home. Since Joplin is the "go to" place since it's the largest city in this area, people from out of town were here as well.

Wasn't the HS graduation at the time of the tornado? That would account for why so many people weren't home when the tornado hit. It reminds me of how the highway in San Fran collasped but because of the World Series in 1989; traffic was light.

The picture is hilarious. Obviously this is a case for the Mythbusters to solve.

Thanks so much.

As others have said, you did a great job. There's only so much you can do when an EF-5 hits.

How far do you live from the path?

List of missing is down to 10 names now.

690 pets have been found and some have been reunited with 191 families. Those are the pictures that bring a tear to my eye, seeing people so happy to find their lost pets.

Here's another link with before/after pics.

http://www.buzzfeed....joplin-missouri

Pets are the ****. They can survive anything.

Insane picture around 1:10 showing the house destroyed but the stereo system is still OK.

Damn, that doctor account is so bone chilling. Amazing he found flashlights, it had to be pitch black.

Wow, just insane how the foundation is wiped clean and yet that vault is still standing. Wonder if anyone rode out the storm in it?

I wonder about the stuff inside. Like can someone go up and say "I have jewels in vault 1-B." and the bank manager says "Here you go!"

P.S. When I was in grade school-- in the late 1970s-- textbooks still said that winds in tornadoes reached 400-600 mph. I kid you not.

It was like that in the early 80's too. I remember giving a book report in 2nd grade about tornadoes. I still remember telling the class winds were over 500 mph. LOL. It was probably 1982 or 1983.

I'm surprised Central Florida isn't higher.

The building was built to withstand 300 MPH winds. If the tornado had been a little bit bigger or stretched farther south, it would have knocked out both of our hospitals.

http://www.ky3.com/n...0,1937966.story

JOPLIN, Mo. -- Mercy Health System-St. John's Regional Medical Center said its hospital tower, severely damaged by the tornado last Sunday, will not be rebuilt. Structural engineers spent the week checking the structural integrity of the building. On Thursday, it was announced that, while the building is not at risk of collapse, the site remains “very dangerous.” Mercy said repairing and reoccupying the building is not a viable option.

Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant you were surprised that the hospital wasn't as damaged as other buildings nearby. I didn't realize you meant you were surprised both hospitals were so close together.

It doesn't make a lot of sense having both your hospitals about 1/2-3/4 of a mile from each other and the building itself and the surrounding area looks like total loss.

Hospitals are constructed differently from other buildings similar in size.

I've always been surprised when people ignore warnings. To me, I would take advantage of the break from my normal routine. It's not like it happens every day or even every week. I guess part of it is people are just too preoccupied w/ their own lives to take it seriously.

JoMo,

Glad you are OK. Did you actually see the tornado or just hear it?

Also, what do people there think of not being allowed to visit bodies in the morgue?

Yes, JoMO's house should be fine, if that is indeed where he lived. We all know how quickly this thing went from tornadogenesis to EF5, though, and while it would've been unwise, I'm not sure I could've resisted the urge to go outside and investigate at that point in the storm's cycle.

Yea to me this is a major red flag. I'm not sure if I buy the whole "he doesn't have access to the internet" thing.

There's no use to speculating but hopefully we find out good news soon.

Except that there is a real and distinct lull between that first "incident" and the primary impact-- more so than I would expect once you're within range of subvortices that are embedded in the main one. My impression is that embedded subvortices will cause substantial, localized increases in wind speed, but once you're in that main circulation, it's going to be crazy, even if you're not being directly impacted by one of the subvortices. I dunno.

I think one of the Mets said in the other thread that the building wasn't hit directly by the tornado. He estimated the tornado was about a block away.

Yeah. If winds got up to 150 mph, there would be no video.

Oh, totally agreed. It looks absolutely ferocious. It's a fantastic video and another great "microdocument" of this very interesting event.

At around 2:20, an animal walks across the yard. The comments on the video say it's a cat but it's way too big to be a cat. I think it's a calf.

The lead times are fine. It's the response delay time that needs improving. That is, how long it takes to implement whatever plan of action one wishes to implement.

Yea I'm sure in some places people discuss whether to take the warning seriously or not. "There's a tornado warning? But I just looked outside. It's fine."

That is a real nightmare scenario. It might be 10 years or 100 years from now but it will happen someday.

There was a school in Albany NY that got hit hard about 15-20 years ago.

Everything that I thought I knew about violent tornadoes and death tolls has gone out the window this spring. It's been a long time since we've seen these kinds of death tolls, and I (like many others I imagine) was lulled into this idea that we wouldn't see this again. I've heard various sentiments in the past few weeks to the effect of "if you get a violent tornado going through a densely populated area, deaths are inevitable". While that may have some truth to it, I cannot help but feel that this is an insufficient answer. Like you Josh, I'm wondering how this happened, given how many violent tornadoes have rolled through significant population centers in the past few decades. Why weren't the Moore-OKC (1999) or Pleasant Grove (1998) tornadoes more deadly, for example?

Could population density in the area at the time of the tornado have anything to do with it? I don't mean population density of Joplin or Tuscaloosa, I mean a lot of people concentrated where the tornadoes hit.

I know building codes are stricter today but does something like that mean anything if the material itself is ****ty? Also, hitting an apartment complex w/ 100 families is a lot worse than hitting a neighborhood w/ 20 families.

Whether it's a tornado warning or emergency...people should take cover. I don't see how you can justify not needing to take cover..just because it's not a tornado emergency. That decision logic is flawed...just take cover.....period.

A bit off topic but did you see the program last night about the Alabama tornadoes? A guy 60 miles NE of Birmingham was watching on 2 different TVs the tornado that went throught Tuscaloosa/Birmingham and headed his way. He didn't seek shelter because he didn't think it would go near him. He ended up filming the inside of the tornado from his 3rd floor apartment. The tornado must have taken 2 hours to get there, he was watching it on TV, saw it outside and STILL didn't seek shelter. I doubt it ever occurred to him to seek shelter.

Point is, there are people that just refuse to listen to warnings and there's not a thing you can do about it.

BTW-I completely agree with you. A warning is a warning and seek shelter.

Hopefully JoMo is OK.

This is going to be bad. Woman from Red Cross said on CNN 2 minutes ago she estimates 75% of the town is destroyed. TWC showed a fire out of control near the hospital.

I would suspect (fortunately) that a high percentage of those have simply gone to relatives etc. That is often the case in these kind of events.

Wouldn't it be the relatives that are reporting them missing? I mean somone is putting the missing people on a list. I know there tends to be a lot of confusion in these situations, so hopefully that is the case.

AP now reporting 339 dead which makes this the 2nd deadliest tornadic outbreak in U.S. history.

Anyone know if it's true that over 400 people are missing in Tuscaloosa alone? They mentioned that on TWC last night before I went to bed.

If true, death toll could be over 5 or 600.

Find a sturdy shelter that can take an EF-5

Drive away. It worked during the Picher, OK EF4 tornado.

I don't think it's that simple. Especially in a city like Birmingham; not everyone has a car. Besides, if everyone left in a car at the same time, you create a traffic jam while an EF-5 tornado is bearing down on you. It might work in some isolated place in OK, but not east of the Mississippi.

And what sturdy shelter can you trust in an EF-5 tornado assuming you are not in the basement?