Sample chapters from 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado

We are still looking to get the word out about our newly-published book, 5:41: Stories of the Joplin Tornado, which features stories written by John Hacker and me, as well as tornado experiences submitted by 17 others, obituaries of those who died, the complete text of the Joplin Tornado Memorial Service, and the final National Weather Service report.

In this note, I am including the introduction and first two chapters of the book. If you have not read this, please do so. If you like what you read and would like to order it for you or for someone you know, please do so through the ad on the side of this page. Thank you.

INTRODUCTION


Tragedy brings people together.

I saw evidence of that right in front of me as I walked along the checkout lines a the 7th Street Wal-Mart in Joplin looking for one of those blue hand baskets so I didn’t have to push an unwieldy cart around the store.

I saw two of my former students, a brother and sister, sitting on a bench, apparently waiting for other family members to finish shopping. The older one had just finished her first year in college. When she was in my eighth grade English class, she was a gifted writer with a way of translating her feelings and fears into poetry. From Facebook conversations with the girl’s younger sister, another former student of mine, I knew that her family had been hit particularly hard by the May 22 tornado that hit this city.

The girl had her arm around her younger brother in a manner that could only be described as protective.

She spotted me approaching and shouted, “Mr. Turner!” drawing the attention of those in the checkout lanes directly behind us.

For the next 20 minutes, I heard a harrowing story of how her family had been right in the middle of the most destructive tornado to ever hit our city. She was home alone at 5:41 p.m. She was the only member of her family who did not get hit by the tornado.

The family was rushing home to be with her when torrential rain began, accompanied by hail. Her father pulled over and they ran into the AT&T building, which proved to be no protection when the tornado hit.

Her mother and her sister were badly injured and had to be taken by helicopter to a Springfield hospital. Thankfully, both survived, though they have a long road ahead of them.

After our conversation ended, I finally found a hand basket and began shopping. As I walked through the aisles, I saw more people who were stopped and talking than I had ever seen in a Wal-Mart store before.

I caught bits and pieces of the various conversations. Not one of them did not include at least some mention of the tornado. For the first few weeks after May 22, the tornado was the only topic of conversation here.

I changed the way I approached conversation and I am sure others did, too. When I ran into friends, acquaintances, and former students, after the initial greeting, I always asked if they had been hit by the tornado. The last thing I wanted to do was start up some silly chatter with people who may have lost someone or who had been displaced.

After I asked, nearly every time the question was greeted with a story. It also changed the way we talked about where we lived. When I was asked the tornado question, I always replied, “No, I was lucky. I was about three blocks from where the tornado hit.”

I quickly realized that I was not the only one to take that approach. I cannot count the number of people who told me how many blocks they were away from the tornado.

I wish everyone could have had that answer. Sadly, many of my conversations were with people who had lost their homes and all of their possessions. Some were staying with relatives. Some had been lucky enough to locate scarce rental property. Some feared they would never again live in the city limits of Joplin.
Every one of the people I talked to had a story about the Joplin Tornado. And every one of them will remember that time, 5:41, forever.

I heard the tornado stories while going about my everyday routine. For my co-author, John Hacker, it was part of his job. John, the editor of The Carthage Press, was in Joplin less than a half hour after the tornado. Though he has a well-earned reputation as one of the best reporters in Missouri, and is a skilled interviewer, he discovered what many reporters who have covered the aftermath of a tragedy have long found to be true- people want to talk.

As John walked through the heart of the devastation that evening, he heard many stories, some of which are included in this volume.

When we decided to write this book, it did not take long to come up with a title. As we wrote our stories and had others sent to us for inclusion in the book, for some reason I thought about the tag line in Naked City, a black-and-white television series from the early ‘60s, about police work in New York City. Each episode ended with the narrator saying, “There are eight million stories in the naked city- this was one of them.”

When the series ended after a four-year run, there were still more than seven million stories waiting to be told.

This collection of stories from the Joplin Tornado is far from comprehensive. If there were 50,000 people in the city May 22, there are 50,000 stories, all centering around what happened at 5:41. We hope the few dozen stories and photographs in this book will serve as a representative sampling of an evening Joplin will never forget.

SURVIVING
By JOHN HACKER
SURVIVING

By John Hacker

Moments after a category EF-5 tornado turned the heart of Joplin’s residential district into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, bloodied \wet and tired survivors began to emerge from the wreckage and take stock of a new reality.

Larry Thomas, who somehow managed to emerge injured from the rubble that was once the Missouri Place Apartments, did not take the time to consider the enormity of what had just happened His first instincts were to help others.

“I came down to see if my professor’s family is all right,” he said, as he walked along an unrecognizable Wisconsin Avenue near the remnants of the Peace Lutheran Church. “They went to the graduation so they might still be over there.”

As he walked, Thomas told his story. “I opened my bedroom window and looked in this direction and heard the freight train coming. I was in the hallway and we’ve got glass doors on both ends and it just busted the windows out. The wind shoved me into a vacant apartment.”

It wasn’t just property that felt the wrath of the tornado. “There’s some fatalities back there. I suspect that the woman across the hall from me stayed in her apartment thinking she was going to be safe…and it’s gone, too.”

Larry Thomas looked around him, taking in the destruction that was evident as far as his eye could see. To the left of him, crumpled buildings, once full of life, now ripped apart. Tall trees felled in seconds by 200 mile per hour winds. People dazed and bloodied, wandering up and down the street, searching for any evidence that life would ever be the same again.

It was a scene that if it were playing on the screens at Northpark Cinema might be praised by critics as a well-realized version of nuclear Armageddon.

This was no movie, however. This was Joplin’s reality.

Thomas continued his story, as he took in the damage. It helped to talk. “I lived in Missouri Place apartments and they’re gone. So is the Summerset apartments; they’re gone. I’ve lost a lot of property in there"- he paused- “but I came out of it- let me see. Do I have any scrapes? I have mud on me. I’m alive.

The words continued to come, a stream of consciousness. “My desktop and laptop are gone and I’m due to start school in two weeks at Pitt State. I have one summer class and this fall I have my practicum and then I’ve got my bachelor’s degree. I don’t have transportation to get there now; it’s trashed.

“I was in the hallway when it first assaulted the building and it forced the door open into a vacant apartment and I got into the kitchen, which is a narrow little place and I hunkered down.

“I survived two hurricanes in Honolulu,” Thomas continued, “Hurricane Eva in 1982 and Iniki in 1992. Then I came over here and they had hurricane season, they had their third one. One thing about a hurricane, you can watch them coming for days.”

And that spelled the difference between the hurricanes and the tornado.

“You can see where the tree line starts to the north and to the south and that’s how wide this bugger was. It just came through here relentlessly. I think there are maybe two elderly people in my building that didn’t get out of here. The old man who lives right below me. I didn’t see him and his unit is wide open; the whole face of it is blown off.

“My professor’s home is gone.”

Now Larry Thomas found himself in a familiar position. “I’m the vice chair of the homeless coalition for Jasper and Newton counties. I know how to survive homelessness. I’ve been homeless six times.

***
Entire families walked helplessly along the street, including Holly Fleming and her children.

:”This is unreal,” she said. “I wasn’t home; my kids were and they hid in the bathroom. If you look at our house, that the only thing standing.”

“I was hugging the toilet,” one child said.

Another child, pointing to what was left of the home at Montana Place and Wisconsin, added, “You see that big old pile of stuff over there? We were right in underneath that. We jumped in there but just before it hit.

The tub was the only thing left of the home.

***
All over the neighborhood south of 20th Street and east of the shattered Joplin High School, victims became rescuers as they struggled to deal with the loss of homes and loved ones.

Several people took crowbars and their bare hands, anything they could find to trip into a small white Toyota on the side of Wisconsin Avenue and pull two older women out of it.

Though all were invested in the rescue operation, one man, covered with blood and with a swollen face, helped in any way he could, desperation evident in his face.

When the tornado hit, he had been in that car. His wife and his mother were still trapped inside.

The three were headed home, trying to beat the storm, but they didn’t make it.

“I got hit in the face by a two-by-four, or that’s what it felt like,” he said. “I lifted my head up for a second when the wind started pushing the car and something hit me.

“I was in the back seat of the car. I don’t know how I got out. I can’t do anything because if I do anything, I’ll start bleeding again.” He held up his bloody hand.

“We were driving down here; we were out on Rangeline and came down 20th. We turned here on Wisconsin, but we didn’t make it. We live in the 2900 block of Wisconsin.”

With the doors jammed, the man’s wife and his 82-year-old mother were trapped, both covered in blood from cuts and scrapes. Debris covered the Toyota; some had come through the windows and pummeled the three occupants.

As the rescue operation took place, shouts could be heard from people asking for help at the nearby Mormon Church on Indiana. People were trapped in the flattened building.

***
“I just went through the storm,” Edward Allen, a resident at 2308 Illinois, said. “You know you look out the window and the storm’s a coming. The last I saw on the TV, it was going off and on, and they said you hit coverage. If you can still hear us, take cover. So I ran in the bathroom and all I had in there was one of those mats, the big fuzzy one, and I put it over my head. There are some two-bys fell right there beside me.

“I knew it was a tornado and it was a-coming, and I was just wondering when it was going to stop.

“The bathroom was kind of in the middle of the house; that’s what they recommend. It did work because these other places and my place are just gone. After it hit, the top of my bathroom was gone. I went to another room because it began to hail real bad, so I got in the other bathroom and other closet and that area still had kind of a cover over it, so I got in there.”

Allen said he had called his son, who lives near Duenweg, and he was coming to pick him up.

“I’ve never been through anything like this. My garage blew down, too. The west wall came in on the east side and all that is laying on my car.

“I look up and say, ‘God, I’m thankful I’m still alive.’ That’s what you can do.”

Fortunately, he said, he did not have to worry about any other loves ones being caught in the tornado. “I don’t have any loved ones in Joplin. My sons lives in Duenweg and my daughter lives in western Kansas.”

***
The early evening air was filled with the sounds of shouting coming from all directions.

A woman ran from a home on 24th Street, screaming. “I need to find help.” Her 10-month-old baby was still in the rubble of her home/

Ron and Ellen Smith and their dogs, Buddy and Buffy, survived the tornado, thankful they were alive, but left with nothing else but their lives.

“It destroyed everything,” Smith said. “Most of the people I know around here have already gotten out.”

Mrs. Smith began their story. “There was a big roar. We were in the dining room and the TV went out and I heard the roar toward the west and there was some kind of banging all of a sudden. We grabbed the dogs and headed to the bathroom.”

“I was sitting in the dining room watching TV thinking, ‘Oh, it’s just another damn storm,’ “Smith said. “She came in and said, ‘Did you hear that roar?’ and I started to hear it. We barely made it to the bathroom in the hall with the dogs.

“See that fireplace wall and big brick wall; that was all that saved us. All of our upstairs, all of our house is gone. She’s in the bathroom crying and crying and I said, ‘Why are you crying? The four of us are okay, to hell with our house.

“When I was a kid in southwest Oklahoma, I used to sit on my mother’s front porch and watch tornadoes go by. But they were in the distance.”

Ellen said, “We got our dogs from Carl Junction after the 2003 tornado. I’ve never heard of anything like this.
“That’s my bedroom downstairs. We crawled out of there and it looks like the places on TV from Alabama. You never expect this.”

“We may end up having to spend the night right here in this truck,” Ron said. “They’re not going to get any of these side streets open. It’ll take forever.

“We’ve got a storm shelter, but it’s buried; no one would have ever known we were in it. I lost my job a few months ago and we had to cancel the insurance on the house last month. I couldn’t afford it; it was $400 a month. We’ve got probably a good $40,000 to $60,000 worth of furniture in there and it’s all ruined.”

Moments later, about the only bright spot on the evening came for the Smiths when their daughter Joanna and granddaughter Hannah arrived, ending a frantic search.

“We called and called and called,” Joanna said. “We had to park down by the school to get up here. The whole area is gone. It was a half a mile away from us. We live behind the mall.

“We didn’t hear about this until 30 minutes after, and they said the Joplin school is gone. We had to get over here, we had to. I didn’t care how long it took us. It took us an hour to get here from the mall. We went down one road and had to turn around, down another road and they said it was blocked. The closer I got here, the more damage you could see.

“We’re getting the hell out of here. We’ve got to get out of here.” She turned to her parents, “Now where are you going to stay? You all are going to have to come to my place now.”

As the reunited family hugged, just down the street, the search continued for others with the fear that when the loved ones were found, they would no longer be among the living.

FORTY-FIVE SECONDS THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
By KELLY MADDY
It started much like any other Sunday. Getting up around 9ish, mowing a few lawns, and Adriel bustling around the house cleaning up before we started our work weekend much like any other Sunday. Getting up around 9ish, mowing a few lawns, and Adriel bustling around the house cleaning up before we started our work week. It is always our day to get the house looking good for the week so it doesn't stress us out through the busy days where we don't have time to mess with it. Later on, it would all seem so funny. Washing the dishes, putting clothes away, storing my lawn mower nice and snug by my garage with weed-eater. We had no idea this would all be for not.

3:40pm
I was finishing my last lawn and started heading back on East 32nd towards my house on 20th and Kentucky. I was watching the development of a super cell storm on my phone's radar app near Parsons, KS and start to take notice. Through the years I have been very interested in meteorology, plotting storm tracks by making my own maps and jumping up and down from my childhood home's roof to make sure I caught all the "Local on the 8's" via the Weather Channel. I knew the May 22nd storm was going to most likely produce a tornado, I just didn't realize the scale of what was about to happen.
That was a bad idea.

The shear was strong and it was a towering, independent cumulonimbus cloud that would be relatively easy to navigate around the south side of...so I thought. I sent my wife Adriel a text message asking her if she wanted to go chase the storm and try to catch a glimpse of some rotation.

4:30pm
After putting up my lawn equipment, we went in our Ford Focus down 7th Street and then to Stateline Rd. We stopped at the gas station near the Stateline Rd. and 7th Street intersection, got a tea to drink and then gauged where to go next. I was observing the storm was still on an East-Northeast track, bringing the southern portion of the cell, in my estimates to cross around Stones Corner (Main St. and Airport Dr. intersection North of Joplin). We dipped around the Galena area for a moment through some country roads and observed the transpiring rotation on the southern flank of the storm. The rotation looked robust and we were experiencing dime size hail at the time.

4:55pm
We got out of that area and took Stateline Rd. to SE 110 in KS all the way up to Fir Rd. and started heading towards Stone's Corner. We pulled into Snack Attack and waiting with our vehicle watching the storm come in. I don't know how to explain it, but I KNEW something wasn't right. Nothing to do with the storm data, reports on the radio, etc. I just somehow knew this wasn't like other storms. Not sure if it was the purple and black, bubbling mammatus clouds, or the obvious shift in the winds, but I tried to remain calm because I didn't want to worry Adriel. Things that didn't have much scientific meaning started racing through my brain and veins and I became very nervous. I noticed the body of the storm is a lot farther south, not the earlier east- northeastern trek I envisioned. So I took myself about a half mile south hoping to get out of the bulk of precipitation and back to a good vantage point for the southern end of the storm.

5:11pm
The first sirens sounded with spotters indicating a strengthening rotation via Doppler radar just West of Joplin. We are now at the Community Bank and Trust on North Main St. (across from Black Cat Fireworks) under their ATM roof to avoid precipitation and the sky was the most ominous things I have ever seen in my life, except for what was 35 minutes away. Thinking we need to get out of the way and back to the house, we started in that direction. Driving down Main St. and onto Murphy Blvd., we pull behind the Landreth Park stage. It is about 5:35 and the air had dried up considerably but the darkness had begun to wrap the city. I should have noticed the rear flank of the storm pulling in all the precipitation, but I didn't. I saw what appeared to be a large area of precipitation and thought I should just get inside and somewhere safe if something were to happen, still thinking it wouldn't.

5:41pm
The second sirens sounded and I knew this was what appeared to be a last ditch effort to warn of what was most likely a tornado on the ground near Joplin. I can no longer contain how nervous and panicked I was to my wife. We accelerated quickly, racing across Joplin going down Pennsylvania Ave. all the way from 4th St. I am going as fast as I can when I start to notice something far out of the ordinary. I look ahead near the chain link, surrounded playground and I see a misty, gray edge defined area of rain that is swirling. I continue to advance about half a block to about 2 houses before Orient Express on 20th St. I throw the car in park and just wait on the side of the street. As I look to my left, I notice there is much more than rain in these clouds as the first large branch stuck our vehicle and more are in the air about to rain down with other debris. Then it all starts.

5:50
Trees, fences, utility poles, anything moderately exposed and sticking vertical out of the ground started to break be blown around. As the strength of the winds grow I look and not only see debris and branches out of my driver side window, I start to see sections of roofs and houses hundreds of feet in the air. I will never forget the imagery as it is burned into my brain as sure as anything I can ever recall. Then our windows start going...both driver side windows first. I push Adriel into the floorboard of the front seat and lean over her to shield her from anything that might fly in while trying to protect the back of my neck and head. I hold her tight and exchange "I love you's" over and over again. It was all I could say that offered any sense. I couldn't describe the storm, yell obscenities, or breathe like I was panicked. I could only say, and in turn receive, the only thing that made sense at the time...to exchange the very simple phrase "I love you". We continued to yell this to each other as the storm lifted my driver side up in the air, buffeting the underbelly of the vehicle with the most unsettling force I have ever felt in my life. The car was only probably up on the passenger side wheels for 15-20 seconds, but it seemed like an eternity as I am sure many have said. It was like 1,000 golf clubs beating apart the vehicle and trying to toss it at the same time. A large piece of debris came and shattered the back glass and I wondered will it ever end. It finally did but the rain kept coming down.

6:05
Shocked, the radio still blaring "Take cover Joplin!” we lifted our heads to see what had happened. My wife says, sobbing, "Kelly our house...Kyle's house....where is our roof and there isn't a garage." Kyle, my brother, lived right next to us and his house was severely damaged as well, and his fiancé Kelsi, were inside with their animals as far as we knew. We had to get to them to make sure they were OK along with our neighbors.
My roof crashing into Kyle and Kelsi's house and car.
The car is still running and I attempt to pull onto 20th, but my path is blocked by debris, trees, and power lines. I reverse and manage to make it to 19th and over a block to my street of Kentucky Ave. Again, it was blocked with power lines but these were up off the ground enough for us to sneak under...not a great idea but we had to. I run with Adriel hand in hand across 20th street as fast as I can to my brothers house. Their home is caved in and none of the doors are able to open, so we kick ourselves in to find them and their animals OK, but very disoriented and stunned. We still had standing walls at our house so we collected all animals and our thoughts for a brief moment and charted a plan of action. I was going to check on neighbors while Kyle stayed with the animals and girls.

6:15

My block. Warzone...

Walking down Kentucky Ave. that night was the most heartbreaking and gut wrenching thing I have ever experienced. While battered and bruised, making my way through the block, my neighbors appeared to be all safe. At the end of our block was another story. I don't want to elaborate on any of that in this note, as these people were brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, wives and husbands of my neighbors. I will say a little bit of me changed that day with what I had seen. Some people deal well with trauma, but I am not one of those. I nearly became physical ill on the curb and had to go back to check on my family. Before I did, a house fire broke out in the 2100 block of Kentucky Ave and people were walking the streets with severe injuries, carrying what they could, heading to somewhere....but I don't think anyone really knew where we all were going.

Just about that time a large Great Dane came running up on our property....he looked really familiar. It was my brother's friend’s dog, owner Nick Dagget who lived behind Dillon's. Seeing that dog.....alone....made our hearts drop. Kyle could barely contain the thoughts of what might of happened to his best friend and we all kept him calm as we could, promising we were going to put the dog up and head towards Nick's house.
My family across town made their way to our house by this time and we saw them running across 20th towards us. We get the car out of the street and into the parking lot of Brandon's Gun Shop on 20th and start to head the only way we can, west on 20th. We filled up the car, not knowing how long traffic out of town would be stuck. We then circled around and made it to I44 so that we could come into Joplin off Rangeline and get to Nick's house that way. We approached Nick's house from 26th and Connecticut and found a route there unobstructed after trying multiple streets. When we reached his neighborhood and I looked towards the west, I soon realized what had taken place. Like the lawn mower on an overgrown lot I had pushed hours before, I could see a path all the way to St. John's hospital. A path that is still viewable all the way from the former Wal-Mart till this day. Bare of trees, structures, etc. This was a warzone. We searched frantically for Nick in the rubble of his house, nothing indicated he was there. His cell phone and a small amount of blood were in the tub, but no Nick. We couldn't do anything else as dark was approaching and we were without flashlights and rescue crews haven't made it to this area yet. We reassured Kyle that he probably made it out, like his dog, but was at a local hospital with modest injuries. Thankfully, that is exactly what happened and we received information later that night that Nick was OK. We made it back to my brother's house in Webb City and attempted to sleep, but as for me, and I am sure the others in the basement....no one got a wink of sleep. It would stay that way for about a week.

After May 22nd
Starting that night and continued till this day my friends, people I never met, and more took to the streets to do what we could. Loaded trucks, sharpened chain saw blades, to offer help and rescue....doing what we could. Everyone is still doing what they are able, but it is no surprise that we will need help for years to come. Our city has been bent, but not broken and in turn has become a more solidified tight nit community that can rise from a storm like this and impatiently ask, "What is next? What can I do? How can I help?" Hearing those questions and them in turn being answered by groups of regular people is the most heartwarming thing I have ever seen. Through cleanup I was approached by churches, local businesses, people from all of the country...putting their hand on your back and asking, "Can I do anything? Are you ok?" etc. while handing you food, supplies, tetanus shots, and tools to aid the cleanup effort. A month on this has impacted my life and motivated me to live for others, not just in times of tragedy, but throughout the rest of my life. None of us are going to have all the answers about how to deal with this or other hard situations in life, but I came away knowing it does get better and that the astounding momentum of the human spirit is something a horrible EF5 tornado can't stop. Life isn't over; it is just different after the 45 seconds that changed everything.