Many factors helped save lives in massive Jefferson City twister
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Eight years to the day after a devastating tornado killed 161 people and injured more than 1,100 others in Joplin, another big twister ripped through Missouri — this time the capital of Jefferson City — but with a far different result: no deaths or serious injuries.
The two storms hit Missouri cities roughly the same size on the same day of the year, May 22. And they both ravaged residential neighborhoods and business districts. But several factors created completely different scenarios — factors that worked against Joplin and helped spare the lives of Jefferson City residents like Debra Gary, who along with her husband, mother and four kids hunkered down in the basement before emerging to find their home badly damaged.
“I always tell my kids, ‘Keep God first,’ because God was there for us,” Gary said Friday. “He kept us and our home safe when the tornado was going on.”
The Jefferson City twister was a big one, an EF-3 with winds estimated at 160 mph. But the Joplin tornado was a rarely-seen monster, an EF-5 with winds in excess of 200 mph. It was on the ground for 22 miles and 38 terrifying minutes, tearing through one-third of the town.
Then there was the timing. The Joplin tornado hit on a Sunday afternoon, as people were out and about, including hundreds who had just left the high school’s graduation ceremony.
“You had many more people potentially in the path, in vulnerable locations,” said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
The Jefferson City twister arrived in the middle of the night, which was actually a good thing, said Brian Houston, a communications professor and director of the University of Missouri’s Disaster and Community Crisis Center.
“We think of nighttime tornadoes being pretty dangerous because people might be asleep and not aware of them, but one of the good things is people tend to be at home, in structures,” Houston said. “It’s always better to be inside somewhere when a tornado strikes, rather than being out.”
The ability to find safe refuge from the storm also favored Jefferson City. Joplin sits in an area of southwestern Missouri where the soil is rocky, so basements are uncommon. In 2011, only about one in five Joplin homes had basements, which forced people to take shelter in far less secure places like bathtubs and closets. Basements are far more common in Jefferson City, which was built on rolling hills along the Missouri River.
Bunting and Houston agree that technology helped in Jefferson City. Smartphones are now omnipresent, and many people have alerts on their phones that warn of approaching weather danger.
Radar is more advanced, too. Forecasters were warning as far back as last week that the Plains and Midwest faced a highly dangerous storm scenario. On Wednesday night, central Missouri TV stations tracked the approaching storm and sirens in Jefferson City first sounded at 11:10 p.m., which was at least 30 minutes before the first property damage was inflicted.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says the tornado that struck the Jefferson City area damaged an estimated 500 homes and buildings.
Parson’s office says roughly 300 buildings were inspected by a specialized team Friday. Of those, 78 were found unsafe. The team determined another 60 were unsafe in some areas.
The bodies of a man and a woman were discovered Friday in a submerged vehicle near the Mississippi River in Missouri, bringing the death toll to nine from the Midwest storms.
In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson declared a state of emergency as the flood-swollen Arkansas River was scheduled to reach record levels next week.