Final report on Joplin Tornado: East Middle School suffered "minor damage"

Why was it necessary to tear down the original East Middle School building?

That question has been posed by many who saw that, while the gymnasium, auditorium, and commons area were destroyed, the classroom portion of the building was intact.

FEMA agreed, after much discussion with R-8 officials, that the building was more than 50 percent damaged and thus eligible to be completely replaced.

That decision, made by C. J. Huff and backed by a 7-0 vote by the Joplin R-8 Board of Education, to build a new East Middle School and Soaring Heights Elementary School on the site, resulted in East staff and some students spending two and a half years in a makeshift warehouse school building.

The decision was made in spite of school officials being told that the building could be ready by opening day 2011, including the gymnasium, though it would have been a while before the auditorium was ready.

The official Technical Investigation of May 22, 2011, Tornado in Joplin, Missouri, which was officially unveiled last week by the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology , says the building, outside of the auditorium and gymnasium, suffered only "minor damage."

The Joplin East Middle School was a building complex comprising several joined sections. The complex, located at 4594 East 20th Street in Joplin (toward the end of the tornado damage path ), had a long and narrow configuration and was oriented in the north–south direction (total length of 664 ft). It was designed in 2007 and constructed in 2009. All sections of the building complex were made primarily of reinforced CMU walls with short– span steel roof decks, except for the Auditorium building, which had a longer roof span, and the Gymnasium building which had precast tilt–up perimeter walls in addition to a longer roof span.

Of the entire school complex, the south end, where the Gymnasium and Auditorium were located, was closest to the estimated center line of the tornado damage path and was affected by an 

estimated maximum wind speed of 170 mph ± 45 mph (EF–4 range) from a northwesterly direction Along the length of the complex, there was a sharp gradient in wind speed with the north end affected by much lower wind speeds compared to those that affected the south end.

Consequently, and due to the fact that most building sections of the north end of the school had shorter span roofs, these sections (north of the Gymnasium and Auditorium) sustained only minor damage to their building envelopes, while the Auditorium and Gymnasium buildings sustained total structural collapse of their roof systems and partial collapse of their perimeter walls.

The NIST study was the result of the work of an investigate team that consisted of four scientists from NIST and one from NOAA, as well as the five member National Construction Safety Team, 13 members of the NIST technical staff, institutional support from 26 others from the NIST, two applied research asociates, and two consultants.

In addition, the findings were peer reviewed by 15 others.

A dissenting point of view, unsigned, can be found in a section of the Joplin R-8 School District website labeled Real or Rumor, which was published shortly after the NIST team came to Missouri Southern State University to reveal its initial findings:

Rumor: I was told that East Middle School only received minor damage during the tornado and that a new school was not necessary.

Real: East Middle School received major damage. Shortly after the disaster, we began work on repairing the building. However, we soon learned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would participate in constructing a new school because the school was more than 50% destroyed. We made the decision to build a new school rather than repair the original school. Our insurance company settled with us on the building for $15.5 million. We believe building a new school is the best decision for our students and our community. We can now be confident in the quality and structural integrity of the building, and we are confident that it will serve our community for many decades.

In addition to this page lacking attribution, there is no information on how many scientists (or superintendents and board members) participated in the two-paragraph study or how many upper level administrators were asked to peer review it.