That wasn’t the case for some Joplin residents who, just days earlier, were caught in the whirlwind. The two had a close call, even though they had a NOAA radio on hand and took immediate action. The pair sheltered in the basement of a college science building until the threat had passed. We were right in the tornado’s projected path, so we high-tailed it,” Levitan said. “I typed ‘college’ into my GPS since those campuses typically have more robust structures, and we found a small college only a few miles away. Knowing they were vulnerable on the road, the pair quickly sought refuge. Their NOAA weather radio - a special radio that can receive NWS alerts and warnings - told them a tornado was on the ground nearby, in the town of Sedalia. Marc Levitan, the lead investigator, and Erica Kuligowski, a NIST sociologist and fire protection engineer at the time, were driving along the highway when they heard a distinct tone. Emergency Communication Is Keyįour NIST researchers - three engineers and one social scientist - were on the ground in Missouri within two days of the tornado, but severe weather still lingered. The experts conducted their investigation of the Joplin tornado under the National Construction Safety Team Act (NCST), which grants NIST and its teams the authority to access disaster sites, subpoena evidence and take other actions. has the greatest number of tornadoes per year. And among all of the nations around the world, the U.S. Tornadoes in general are deadly phenomena, so much that since 1950 they have caused more deaths than hurricanes and earthquakes combined. And the $2.8 billion in damages made it the costliest.Īlthough the Joplin tornado was far from a run-of-the-mill event, it was one of several cataclysmic tornadoes in that spring alone. since the National Weather Service (NWS) began official record-keeping in 1950.

The high number of fatalities made it the deadliest single tornado in the U.S. Late in the afternoon, a tornado rated as the most intense on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, an EF5, cut a 6-mile-long (9.7-kilometer) gash through the densely populated Joplin metro area, home to more than 50,000 people.ĭespite the city’s track record of following the latest building codes and the dissemination of warnings beforehand, the tornado - with winds estimated at more than 200 miles (321 kilometers) per hour at times - killed 161, injured over 1,000 and wrecked more than 8,000 buildings, including a major hospital and other critical facilities. Thousands gathered for a high school graduation ceremony.īut as the atmosphere swirled above, catastrophe brewed. People attended church services and ate at restaurants with friends and family. At a hard-hit Home Depot store, Josh said, searchers did make a particularly disturbing discovery: a father with two children in his arms, all dead.For many residents of Joplin, Missouri, May 22, 2011, started out like any other Sunday. They didn't come across any survivors during their stint. Josh and his three siblings with first-responder training spent Sunday night and much of Monday pitching in with search-and-rescue operations before returning home. 'We’d holler out 'search and rescue!' when we come to a house and if there was no roof on the house we’d make sure it was safe to enter and then we’d go through and look,' Josh said. Jill is part of the Duggar Family from TLC's 19 Kids & Counting.

JIll was part of a large group of firefighters that came to the area to help aid local emergency teams. Following the massive tornado that ripped through the town of Joplin, MO, Jill and several of her siblings traveled from their Arkansas home to help. Jill Duggar, holds a stuffed animal uncovered while volunteering with search and rescue operations on Monday, May 23, 2011. The younger Duggars handed out supplies, while the ones with emergency training combed the streets looking for survivors amid the collapsed houses.

When they arrived in Joplin, they were immediately put to work. The family members set out in a three-car caravan loaded with supplies including bottled water, flashlights, batteries, Gatorade, dried snacks and ponchos.

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