General Chat / Joplin, MO Tornado

Hello all:
I've been absent for quite awhile now. I just wanted to drop in and let you all know about a recent tornado in Joplin, MO - my home town. The tornado hit Sunday May 22nd at about 5:30PM. My wife and I lost our home but consider ourselves blessed to have our lives. At current count there are 138 confirmed dead and still a hand full of people unaccounted for. The tornado started at one side of the town and went to the other, basically leveling half of the town.

We rode out the storm in an interior bathroom, and didn't realize the devastation until walking out our front door. Houses across the street from us had no roof, rain and hail was pouring down, all of our windows were broken and water was coming in the house. Less than a city block from our house is complete devastation, the houses that were there are now just rubble. I checked on an elderly lady that lived across the street from us, her home was destroyed and I was afraid that I would find her body. Thankfully she wasn't home when the tornado hit. Sirens were blaring and we could smell natural gas leaking from a nearby house. We got away as soon as possible, and later learned that the tornado had literally gone from one side of the city to the other. There was no cell phone coverage and so it took awhile to get in touch with family and friends.

We are waiting on our insurance adjuster to tell us what we need to do with our house. We are hoping for it to be totaled, as there is extensive damage and rebuilding would be easier than repairing.

I've heard many worse stories from people who survived the storm and lost loved ones. Please keep Joplin, MO in your thoughts and prayers, it will be years before we will be back to "normal."

www.rebuildjoplin.org
http://abcnews.go.com/US/tornado/
http://www.nytimes.c...q=joplin&st=cse
http://www.cnn.com/2...?iref=allsearch

glad you're safe. just remember, it's just material things that got destroyed, be glad you have your life.

these tornadoes used to not scare me as i've lived in tornado alley my entire life and have never witnessed one, but this recent one you went through and one that went through a town next to mine a month or two ago really got me to realize how serious it is. i pay attention to the warnings now.

i recently got stuck on the highway and both lanes were shut down for about 3 hours as the tornado went through the town we were approaching on the highway. a few days after i saw the damage to the town and to the airport.

scary stuff.

im happy your family is ok bro, i cant imagine that, but like gee said, its materials lost that you can work on getting back, you cant work hard to get a life back... The tornadoes that ripped through Massachusetts yesterday just missed my family, just that feeling alone is gut wrenching. I really couldn't fathom loosing my home to a storm. Im happy your ok and my thoughts and prayers are with you, your family and your city ozone!!

Holy shit! I'm really sorry to hear this, it scared me actually. Losing my home is one of my worst nightmares. I wish you strength!



By the way, I have the impression that most houses in the US are made from wood. I know that the building material won't matter much in such an extreme situation as this, but still I wonder why less frail materials aren't used more often. If a fire can wipe out an entire city, use bricks for building. If floods threaten your home, go live on a hill. If the weather is hot, paint your house white. If tornadoes are common in your region, build your house out of... wood?

Thanks everyone. Our home is mostly built with wood material and bricks. The local high school was completely brick and it was leveled. I don't think there really is a good way to prepare an entire home from a tornado of this size. We plan on having a basement or cement room in the future, as we are taking storms more seriously now as are most people in the area. Building an entire house to withstand 200mph winds isn't really an option.

Like Ozone said, it's not feasible (financially) to build entire houses to be able to withstand tornadoes. For most, a storm cellar or basement is their best bet. Now, where I live in NC basements are practically non-existent, so we depend on windowless interior rooms like Ozone did.

Ozone, really sorry to hear about your home, and the entire town of Joplin. I was at my townhouse in Raleigh when our tornado went through a couple of months ago, and it scared the shit out of me. The winds really kicked up but it didn't sound like a tornado where we were--in fact, the tornado had touched down just a few miles away and went almost straight through downtown Raleigh. When I drove through the city the next day what I saw was humbling, but it was nowhere near the devastation seen in Joplin. I'll keep Joplin in my prayers man...

I was wondering if you had been affected by this. I couldn't remember if you were in Joplin still...

It's great to hear that you and your family is ok. It's easy enough to hear about these sorts of things happening states away but this hit pretty close to home for me. Hopefully you guys can pull through and I wish you all the best with rebuilding your home.

And Liam, tornadoes aren't like earthquakes where you can just reinforce buildings with a building code to the point where only the "one in a million" disasters are devastating. It's not cost feasible and we're talking about the kind of forces that rip trees that have been in the ground 100 years up and deposit them miles away. There's really no common building material for small structures that's going to withstand that. Plus it's damn near impossible to know exactly where these things are going to hit... it's just a vague danger zone. I live in a brick building myself and feel no more at ease about experiencing a tornado like the one that hit Joplin than if I lived in a cardboard box.

also liam you have to think thats its not only the wind speed thats amazingly destructive, but what the wind is throwing at sometimes more then double the speed of the tornado itself, i would much rather live near a fault line then tornado alley, but i cant really say much on places to live. I am in southern Louisiana, this whole state is a hurricane landing strip. I pray to god this year is like last with minimal land fall but with the way things have been pushing in from the gulf im really scared were going to have a serious tornado here very soon, a few months ago we had one rip through Rayne which is about 25 minutes from me and there hasn't been tornadoes in that area, let alone ones that caused extensive damage since the early 1900s. The earth is pissed, and she is very much letting us know things need to change on a global scale or its only going to get worse.

If you don't mind me asking OZONE, who is your home insurance with? Im in the process of owning my home right now and i know how sometimes they pull out the fine print on you with serious natural disaster stuff like this, i reallllly hope they total your home out (sounds fucked up to those who dont know about insurncae policies im sure, but its not.) so you can move on with rebuilding and dont have to patch up a more then likely devastated structure.

rK_, where in Louisiana are you? I'm at Tulane in New Orleans, so I know plenty of people from the south Louisiana area. Are things ok after the Mississippi flooding from a few weeks ago?

yea, im in lafayette, about 1:45 outside new orleans with good traffic, but we didnt have any effects from the flooding. Alot of my people in the Morgan City area were evacuated for a few days but its been so dry this summer the flood stages didn't hit as hard or as fast as they thought after they opened the Morganza spillway. But thats why i was asking OZONE about his insurance situation, just because of the flooding that didnt even reach our parts, my flood insurance through State Farm has now changed there policies, which means i have to renew my policy that is now being created by a 3rd party insurance agency, so basically im getting fucked out of about another $80 a month for a "just in case" situation when the policy i am currently under covers everything that could possibly happen to my home in case a flood did cause damage. They are just simply smelling more money to be made and there doing it very cleverly but its a bunch of bullshit. I just hope in a situation as serious and dire as his they don't start pulling out the fine print and drag on a already insanely stressful time for him.

Oh, wow. That's good to hear that Lafayette wasn't hit by the floods, considering a few of my architecture friends are from there. That insurance change seems like complete bullshit though.

Wow, that's a pretty tough story!

I know tornados are pretty common in the US but is it also pretty common for them to be this big and devastating?

This tornado is the 8th worst recorded in the US from my understanding, devastation like this isn't common. There have been a lot of good stories come out of this tragedy, though. Working on our home we received help from a crew with a bobcat that helped pull some tree stumps out. We also received help from several groups of people just walking the streets trying to help. People are driving the streets with food and water and just giving it out. My church has received semi after semi of trailers loaded with food, clothes, and water. Several companies have donated a million dollars each it's good to see people helping. We have volunteers from all over the nation; I met a lady that survived hurricane Katrina and was now here helping, and a man from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I've met people that have just driven in from hours away to help. I've heard estimates that it will take 2 - 3 billion dollars to rebuild the damaged area.

rK_ We have Travelers insurance. I don't have very much to tell you yet, I'm meeting with the insurance adjuster assigned to my claim today at noon. I tried calling the number on my claim the night of the tornado and even though my policy clearly states "365/24/7" contact, I couldn't get anyone except a full voice mailbox. I filed the claim the day after and they were very nice, telling me to save all my receipts from expenses that I incurred to eat and make temporary fixes to keep rain out, etc. They have a mobile claim unit setup where they said they will give me a cash advance, but I didn't mess with that because I don't really need cash up front, I just need to know what to do from here. My neighbor next door has American Family, and they totaled his house two days after the tornado and gave him a check for the maximum amount on his policy, both on the dwelling and the contents. I'm really hoping that Travelers does the same for us, as repairing seems like a lost cause.

I've heard that AAA has been making people itemize lost contents of their completely destroyed homes, and I've also heard of American Family not being very fair. I think a lot of it may come down to the adjuster. I've heard good things about Farmers, and they have trucks driving all around the city, they have quite a presence in Joplin which is good to see.

I'll let you know what I find out after meeting with the adjuster today.

Well, Travelers didn't total my home because there was no sign of structural damage according to them. I think they are going to be treating me fairly. I had my uncle, a retired contractor, there while the adjusters were there. They basically spent two hours looking through each room and writing down everything that was wrong. They are supposed to send me a quote on how much they will give me to repair everything. I was obviously hoping that they would just hand me a big check and I could demolish the house and move on, but it looks like now I have to decide if we want to live there or repair it and sell it.

It's unfortunate that my house will probably be the only house left on the block that is old, but it will look like a new house afterward.

Amen OZONE! Glad to see you here again brother, I wish it was of different circumstances..

Can't wait to see your house finished. Joplin is looking good slowly but surely, God bless the USA for all their support.

I seen a programme about this the other night on the bbc crazy stuff man, It looked like a massive bomb had just devastated the place. Glad your ok and good luck

necropost?

Ozone, hopefully you'll be able to eventually live a normal life. Just have faith!

Amen OZONE! Glad to see you here again brother, I wish it was of different circumstances..

Can't wait to see your house finished. Joplin is looking good slowly but surely, God bless the USA for all their support.

Blast from the past

Just saw the additional posts. To update for anyone who cares, we aren't back in our house yet. It seems that the people whose houses were completely totaled all got big checks and were able to move on, where the people who sustained a lot of damage were stuck "remodeling." Our house will be nicer that before when it's done, but waiting this long is frustrating.

We've been doing as much of the work on our house as possible and are living with my in-laws. I actually like my in-laws, but we are more than ready to have our own home again. It's been over six months now since the tornado.

It seems that every time I drive into our neighborhood there is a new house going up, which is good news. Here is a view from my front door a few days ago:

Can't believe you're living (sort of) in such a post-apocalyptic landscape. Hope you can move back soon, and I'm looking forward to seeing what your new home looks like. Good luck dude!