Original subtitles

Tornadoes are one of Mother Nature’s

most extraordinary phenomena.

With a diameter of over 3,000 meters,

they can leave a trail of destruction,

covering areas greater than 300 kilometers,

or nearly the distance of a plane journey

from New York to Washington D.C.

With eyewitness accounts and fascinating expert insights,

we investigate an area in the United States

known as Tornado Alley,

and take a look at a terrifying day in May, 2011,

when the small town of Joplin, Missouri

was ravaged by one of the deadliest tornadoes

to ever strike America.

By the nature of its extraordinary structure,

a tornado can rip through a district,

completely destroying one house

while leaving its neighbor virtually unscathed,

making it one of Mother Nature’s

most mercurial killers.

Tornadoes are nature’s most violent storms.

Spawned from powerful thunderstorms,

they can cause fatalities

and devastate neighborhoods within minutes.

They are vertical funnels of violently spinning air,

extending from a thunderstorm right down to the ground.

Their winds can reach over 400 kilometers per hour

and can clear a highly destructive pathway.

Some tornadoes are clearly visible,

while rain or low-lying clouds hide others.

They can develop so quickly

that there is little, if any, advanced warning.

Before a tornado hits,

the wind may die down and the air become still.

Sometimes, all you are able to see

to determine its location

is a cloud of debris whirling above the ground.

Tornadoes usually form near the far side of a thunderstorm

and are often accompanied by falling rain and hail.

But as violent as these driving forces may be,

they can sometimes bring with them

clear skies and sunshine.

The most destructive tornadoes spawn from giant,

persistent thunderstorms called supercells.

So a supercell is a rotating thunderstorm,

so it’s a special kind of storm.

We don’t often get them here in the UK.

But in parts of the world like the United States,

this is where you hear about the most-- big landmasses--

you get the conditions necessary

to produce these massive rotating storms

that produce really big hailstones, really heavy rain,

strong winds, and then tornadoes.

The magnitude of these twisters can be seen

in the infamous Tri-State Tornado,

considered the deadliest tornado in U.S. history.

On the 18th of March, 1925,

this tornado struck Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri.

During a terrifying three and a half hours,

it punched a path over 468 kilometers long,

leaving 695 dead and over 2,000 injured.

It struck thirteen counties, and resulted in a total

of 16.5 million dollars worth of damage,

roughly the equivalent of 230 million dollars today.

Tornadoes frequently affect various regions of America,

making it appear as if this natural phenomenon

is unique to that part of the world.

But the number of countries

where these deadly forces have been reported is immense,

ranging across the globe from India to Argentina,

South Africa to Australia.

Even England is not immune

to this freak weather phenomenon.

It’s just absolutely amazing.

I can’t believe it. I’ve heard since

that there’s a lot of other households being affected.

Traditionally,

this country is thought of

as a land of gently rolling countryside,

where a few inches of rain can be a major talking point.

But a surprising study in 2015

showed that England has more tornadoes per square kilometer

than anywhere else in the world,

and that includes America’s notorious Tornado Alley.

One of the interesting aspects of tornadoes

in the United Kingdom

is that they occur year-round.

So in the United States, we have a very distinct seasonality,

so it’s really during the spring

and again a little bit in the autumn.

But in the United Kingdom,

it’s really unique that we get tornadoes year-round

and there really isn’t a peak seasonality for them.

On average, England is hit by

about 34 tornadoes each year.

It just went really dark.

Me and my friend had to hold on to the railing.

It was that windy. It just went completely black,

and then just big dust storms flying around everywhere.

In 2005,

a tornado in Birmingham

reached speeds of 200 kilometers per hour,

injured 19 people, tore up more than 1,000 trees,

and caused 40 million pounds worth of damage.

Unbelievable, heh.

For all the years we’ve been kept,

all the years we’ve been on this site,

the best part of 10 years,

I mean, I’ve never seen anything like this at all.

Not since... back in ’86 or ’87.

And to sort of see where it’s so focused

and to see the trail of it,

it’s absolutely incredible.

I saw a table flying across the air--

you know, a picnic table, four legs.

Across the air.

Right over the top there.

And all the dust and debris came up:

flowers, leaves, bits of tar, everything else,

like a whirlwind going ’round.

In November 1981, no less than 105 small tornadoes

touched down across a large portion

of the English Midlands,

setting a world record for the most number of tornadoes

in a single 24-hour period.

It’s only a matter of time before we do get a larger one,

which would be life-threatening.

So if people realize, are aware, that tornadoes do occur

relatively commonly in the United Kingdom,

then they can take the necessary stage of precautions.

But in terms of overall numbers and ferocity,

the United States is undoubtedly

the world’s tornado hotspot,

with about a thousand twisters occurring each year,

resulting in 80 deaths and more than 1,500 injuries annually.

All 50 states have experienced twisters,

but Texas, located in the American South,

holds the record with an annual average of 120.

A 1953 outbreak in the central city of Waco

remains the most devastating twister in the state’s history.

While it would eventually spread to 10 additional states

over the course of its three-day lifespan,

114 fatalities would occur in the city of Waco alone.

The most destructive tornadoes occur in Tornado Alley,

a region that includes South Dakota, Nebraska,

Kansas, Oklahoma,

Northern Texas, and Eastern Colorado.

In this region,

the atmosphere is affected by the Rocky Mountains to the west

and the Gulf of Mexico to the south.

During springtime,

the Rocky Mountains can funnel a strong westerly jet stream

of cool, dry air across Tornado Alley.

This often creates a trough of low pressure

drawing in warm, moist air from the Gulf.

That gives you the perfect conditions

for large, powerful thunderstorms

and the strong vertical winds necessary to spawn tornadoes.

Jet streams are narrow, fast flowing currents of air

around 8 to 11 kilometers above the Earth’s surface,

flowing from west to east

at speeds of up to 320 kilometers per hour.

They were first discovered during the Second World War

when pilots regularly flew from America to the United Kingdom

and noticed that time was being saved on flights to the UK.

They are formed by temperature differences

in the upper atmosphere,

between the cold polar air

and the warm tropical air.

In the U.S., jet streams drag cold air from the north

towards the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico.

As the jet stream swings further north,

so does tornado activity.

Tornadoes can form at virtually any moment,

but occur more often in late afternoon,

after a daily buildup of heat.

They are also more common in spring and summer.

Despite popular belief, tornadoes are invisible.

The reason we are able to see them

can be attributed to condensed water droplets,

as well as dust and debris that gets picked up

as they move across land.

The funnel of spinning air on an average tornado

is about 200 meters across,

although as it twists and shifts,

its path of destruction will be eight times that width.

Many tornadoes move across the ground

at roughly 50 kilometers per hour,

but may suddenly increase to speeds

of over 100 kilometers per hour.

Most don’t travel further than 10 kilometers

during their brief lifespans.

But in that time, they can be astonishingly destructive.

The winds in super tornadoes,

the ones that cause widespread devastation and death,

can reach terrifying speeds of up to 480 kilometers per hour.

Nothing above ground can survive in their path.

And it’s that path of destruction

that is used to measure, classify,

and compare every tornado.

The Enhanced Fujita scale is how we measure

the strength of a tornado,

and it’s based on damage,

rather than a direct wind speed measurement.

So the Fujita scale

was developed in 1971

by Ted Fujita, a scientist, and he found

a correlation between the wind speed

and the damage caused by a tornado.

Now in 2007,

the National Weather Service in the United States

switched to the Enhanced Fujita Scale,

so they added more structures and more information

about what wind speeds could affect different structures,

and different building standards, and practices.

So they’ve kind of updated the Fujita scale

with a bit more information.

The base level for a tornado

is an enhanced Fujita zero,

or EF zero for short.

Winds will be up to 137 kilometers per hour,

and you will typically see light damage.

The next level of severity is EF-1,

with winds of up to 177 kilometers per hour.

The effects will be moderate:

Mobile homes will be overturned or badly damaged.

When you reach EF-2,

winds have moved up to 217 kilometers per hour.

At this point, there will be considerable damage.

Roofs will tear off well-constructed houses.

If you reach EF-3, you’ll have some really brutal wind,

with speeds of up to 265 kilometers per hour.

Expect the damage level to be severe.

Entire stories of well-constructed houses

will be destroyed.

At the next level of EF-4,

you’ll have ferocious winds of up to 322 kilometers per hour,

resulting in cars being thrown from the ground.

But the most intense tornado of all is an EF-5,

with wind speeds of over 322 kilometers per hour.

Anywhere hit by such a calamity

will suffer unimaginable damage.

Strong frame houses will be swept off their foundations

and entirely leveled.

Objects the size of cars will become weaponized,

flying through the air further than 100 meters.

It was probably 15 minutes of this

just steady, loud rumble, shaking sound...

almost like an earthquake.

And, uh, once that passed, we could hear natural gas.

It was just spewing out of the backyard

of the house we were in.

The wind from an EF-5

releases one billion watts of kinetic energy,

equal to the electric output of a large nuclear power station.

These types of tornadoes only account for

around 5 percent of the overall number,

but they wreak by far

the greatest proportion of damage,

death, destruction, et cetera.

So most of these lower-end tornadoes pass without anything,

or much happening, so you might get some branches broken

or some small trees blown down.

It’s these really big ones that constitute a small proportion

that are responsible for much of the damage.

But if we know that tornadoes are so dangerous,

why can’t we just build houses that are twister-proof?

It’s certainly possible to build structures

that can withstand a tornado,

but they wouldn’t make very suitable homes.

And even if you live in Tornado Alley,

it’s highly unlikely that you are going to receive

a direct hit.

Even in the most tornado-prone place in the world,

any given square mile is only going to get hit by a twister

once every 700 years.

So it simply doesn’t make sense

to live in the kind of concrete bunker

that could survive such a cataclysm.

But when it comes to protecting your home

from the peripheral damage,

there are plenty of things that can be done.

The most vulnerable part of a building is the roof.

With that gone, not only would wind and rain easily come in,

but walls would also collapse.

So securing roof tiles

and attaching steel ties to the rafters is essential.

Another option would be creating a safe room,

a room with reinforced concrete walls and no windows,

within the interior of the home.

Protecting our homes is important.

Protecting the people inside of them is paramount.

While tornadoes may form in a quick manner,

there are visible danger signs

that one should always be on the lookout for:

A dark, greenish sky,

large hail,

and a powerful, train-like roar

from the spinning air in the distance.

You may notice the wind becoming mild

and the air growing still.

The U.S. Meteorological Service

has developed its own tools to help save lives.

They use Doppler radars,

satellites, weather balloons,

and computer modelling

to watch the skies for severe storms

and suspicious tornado-like activity.

Doppler radars are able to penetrate weather systems

to record wind speeds and spot any areas

of rotation inside thunderstorms.

Before Doppler radar,

the tornado warnings were based on knowing that

the environmental conditions were conducive

to creating a tornado,

or based on live reports

from people who were living in the area,

or perhaps a police officer, or an emergency responder.

So those were... If you wait to get a tornado report

and then you issue a tornado warning,

that’s quite a reactionary warning.

Now, that can give you lead time,

you know, the next town over,

if you know the direction the tornado is heading,

you do have some lead time.

but Doppler radar gives a bit more lead time

because you can see a tornado potentially develop,

so it gives a bit more lead time, in that sense.

If you consider that a typical thunderstorm

is about 10 to 20 kilometers across,

containing both upward and downward air currents,

it is vitally important to be able to see

what is happening inside the storm.

When a tornado has been officially sighted,

warnings are issued to the population.

The message is stern, but simple:

Seek immediate shelter.

Now, with modern technology,

the National Weather Service now has the ability

to give you location-based warnings on your mobile phone,

so it will pick up where you’re located.

They have smaller warning areas now,

and you’ll be able to know that there’s a tornado

that’s closer to your area,

which is really helpful for people reacting to a tornado.

Knowing a tornado is going to form is one thing.

Figuring out where it is headed is another matter entirely.

It had been previously thought

that once a twister had been formed,

it would take a random path of destruction.

But a study of the catastrophic 2011 tornadoes

in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Joplin, Missouri

seemed to illustrate some surprising patterns.

Careful analysis of aerial photos

showing the trail of devastation

found that tornadoes preferred going uphill,

and caused more destruction during their ascension.

Scientists also noticed tornadoes jumping over valleys

and only critically damaging the tops of surrounding hills.

This has significant implications

when it comes to decisions on where and how to build

in areas prone to major tornado activity.

If you were in a building and a tornado was occurring,

you want to get to the interior space of that building,

and preferably in a smaller room.

So if you’ve ever seen a house under construction, for example,

you see all of the support beams in place.

If you look at a bathroom in a house that’s being built,

there are a lot of support beams around.

That’s a very sturdy place to be.

You also want to be away from windows

because windows quite often shatter in a tornado

and debris will be flying,

so you want to be protected from that.

It’s helpful to be underneath a sturdy object, so in case

the roof collapses, for example,

you’ll be protected from that,

and if you can cover yourself up in anything,

that will be helpful too, to protect you

from debris flying.

Another crucial source of information

for tornado patterns and behaviors are storm chasers.

Each year, scientists, weather experts, and adrenaline junkies

race to be in the right place at the right time

when a tornado strikes.

They try to guess where it is headed,

so they can place sensors in its path.

These sensors can provide important data like wind speed,

temperature, humidity,

and pressure from inside the tornado.

It’s an incredible challenge,

but it’s also incredibly dangerous.

I spent a year in the States, in Oklahoma,

where I got interested in this stuff.

And I got the chance to storm chase a bit,

we saw some tornadoes, supercells from a distance--

so not properly right in there.

I went back for a holiday a couple years later,

was staying at a friend’s house,

and got caught up in a supercell

with tornado sirens going off-- a tornado warning.

So I spent a year there without seeing anything up close,

and then went back for three days,

and was right in the middle of one then.

So that involved everything from sheltering,

getting into the bathroom,

putting a mattress over your head. It was quite...

My heart was going quite fast during those few minutes.

It doesn’t last long, but...

everything just went black.

The power went out, and stuff like that...

Battering winds and driving rain,

lightning strikes and flash floods:

These are just to name a few of the horrors

these daredevils will face,

all in the hopes of getting themselves closer

to something even more terrifying: the tornado.

If you’re driving in a car,

you may think you can outrun a tornado

because they’re not gonna--

tornadoes don’t propagate

forward at 100 miles per hour.

However, what a tornado can do

is it can lift up from the ground

and reform in another place very close by.

And that place could be right in front of your car.

Tornadoes can also take a sharp right-hand turn without notice.

They tend to wobble,

they tend to not go directly in a straight line.

On average, a tornado will go in a straight line,

but they do wobble.

And you can’t predict that when you’re in a car.

But tornadoes are not only found on land.

They can also form over oceans,

lakes, and even rivers

as swirling columns of air.

Tornadic waterspouts share features

with land tornados.

They are linked with severe thunderstorms

and often coincide with large hail,

powerful winds, and storm surges,

as well as hazardous lightning.

If a waterspout moves onshore,

the National Weather Service will issue a tornado warning,

as some of them pose a significant danger

to both life and property.

But thunderstorms aren’t always necessary

to form a waterspout.

There exists a strange kind of waterspout which forms along

the dark flat base of a line of developing cumulus clouds:

the fair-weather waterspout.

While tornadic waterspouts develop downward

in a thunderstorm,

a fair-weather waterspout develops

from an isolated patch of rapidly spinning air

on the surface of the water and builds its way upwards.

By the time you can see the funnel,

the fair-weather waterspout is reaching maturity.

They form in light wind conditions,

which is why they remain relatively static.

But moving in to take a closer look would be a grave mistake,

as they can be just as deadly as a tornado.

There is another cousin of the tornado

that also forms in fair weather

known as the dust devil.

A dust devil is a strong, clearly formed whirlwind.

A large dust devil can be 10 meters wide

and extend more than a kilometer in height,

a palpable threat to both people and property.

Dust devils require certain conditions to spawn.

They need clear skies and a flat, barren surface,

such as desert or tarmac to absorb heat from the sun

and create the hot air that fuels them.

Any wind will destabilize their spinning effect.

When the earth is heated up

such that an area of the earth is warmer than the air above it,

then you have rising air, and now if that air is rotating,

and it gets stretched, it rotates very quickly,

and becomes a dust devil.

Dust Devils are mostly small and short-lived,

but can often develop into a truly dangerous threat.

But it’s the fully formed tornado

that is Mother Nature’s true wind-driven killing machine.

The worst outbreak occurred in the United States

on the 3rd and 4th of April, 1974.

The country saw 148 twisters across 13 states,

killing 335 people

and injuring upwards of 6,000.

Just how deadly and destructive they can be

was made tragically apparent in May of 2011,

when an EF-5 tornado swept across Joplin,

a town in Missouri with a population of over 50,000.

By the time that twister had blown its devastating course,

it had killed 158 people

and injured upwards of 1,000.

It was a hot and humid Sunday afternoon

on the 22nd of May, 2011 in the Central United States.

As clouds gathered,

people braced themselves for a coming summer storm.

But as cold and warm fronts clashed in the skies above,

a supercell thunderstorm was formed.

2011 had already been

a testing year for wild weather.

Throughout April, several state records were broken

during a period which included a deadly outbreak

of violent tornadoes across the Midwest.

By the end of April,

there had been a staggering 292 tornadoes,

setting a new record for the total number of twisters

in a single month.

On the 27th of April,

the first EF-5 super tornado in three years

killed at least 14 people and cut a half-mile swathe

through entire neighborhoods in Smithville, Mississippi.

This is why weather watchers became so concerned

when just four weeks later,

another supercell moved ominously

from southern Kansas to Missouri.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch

at 2:40 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time,

indicating that conditions for tornadoes were favorable

in parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

The storm generated several twisters,

as well as wind damage and flash flooding

across southwestern Missouri.

Late in the afternoon, storm chasers and spotters

reported multiple vortices west of Joplin.

The National Weather Service received its first report

of the tornado at 4:34 p.m. local time,

from west of the Missouri-Kansas border.

It intensified with unprecedented speed

as it transformed from a funnel cloud

to an extremely large and powerful twister

in under 10 minutes.

By 4:45 p.m., Jasper County Emergency Management

had begun coordinating with the National Weather Service

to track the tornado

and issued a specific alert for Joplin at 5:17 p.m.

The City of Joplin borders Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

At the time, its population was only around 50,000,

but more than 400,000 people

lived within a 64-kilometer radius, making Joplin

Missouri’s fourth largest metropolitan area.

At 5:17, outdoor emergency sirens

immediately sounded in Joplin.

They wouldn’t know it at the time,

but they now had just 24 minutes

to protect themselves from the monster tornado

that was to destroy much of their city.

When they heard the first wail of the sirens,

many people looked out and saw nothing,

and just assumed that it was a false alarm,

and the later sirens may have been drowned out

by the noise of torrential rain and hail

that preceded the tornado’s first onslaught.

It’s very tempting to go outside and see what’s going on.

I cannot recommend against that enough.

You typically do not have that much time

before a tornado strikes.

So if a tornado warning goes off and you’re in your home,

go into an interior room in your house,

preferably away from windows.

Go under something sturdy,

just in case there’s debris falling on you,

and if you can wrap yourself up to prevent being damaged

by the debris that’s flying around you, then that’s ideal.

As the storm tore through entire neighborhoods,

emergency services collapsed.

Two of the four fire stations in the city

were swept away by the strong winds.

The local hospital was being torn apart.

All police, fire, and ambulance personnel

were given instructions not to venture out

until the storm had passed.

If you’re out in the open,

there’s no building you can take shelter in,

get out of your vehicle if you’re in a vehicle--

a vehicle is not a safe place to be in a tornado--

find the lowest place around you, such as a ditch,

and get flat, as flat as possible.

Try to cover up your head and neck

to prevent being injured by debris.

Don’t go under an overpass.

So it’s quite tempting to try to hide underneath an overpass

because you won’t be affected by the hail,

but it’s been found that the winds in a tornado,

as they pass over an overpass,

can create a wind-tunneling effect,

which can actually create wind speeds that are higher

than actually within the tornado itself.

Ranked as an EF-5,

the highest possible classification,

it was estimated that

the tornado’s maximum wind speed

clocked in at more than 320 kilometers per hour.

The tornado sliced through over 9 kilometers of Joplin,

from west to east,

cutting a swathe of destruction and death

over a kilometer wide.

It caused 161 fatalities

and 1,371 injuries,

making it the single deadliest U.S. tornado since 1947,

and the seventh deadliest in U.S. history.

At the height of its ferocity, it crushed homes

and wrenched them from their foundations.

Steel reinforced concrete porches were torn apart

and hurled through the air.

Concrete driveways lifted off the soil beneath them.

Family cars were launched through houses,

or rolled and spun until they were completely crushed.

More than 15,000 vehicles,

including heavy buses and tractor trailers,

were picked up and carried by winds,

some for hundreds of meters.

Thousands of buildings were destroyed and damaged.

Wood framed houses turned into kindling,

and paving stones were tossed through the air like confetti.

Shocked survivors rummaged amongst the debris

of what only a few minutes ago had been their family homes,

searching for their possessions.

They knew that for them, this was day zero:

They would have to start their lives again from scratch.

People were seen walking around in a daze.

They couldn’t even tell where they were.

Everything they had known,

every street sign, every building,

every landmark, was gone.

In its place, a flat sea of debris.

The loss of life could well have been higher.

At the time the tornado struck,

Joplin High School was holding its graduation ceremony

at the nearby Missouri Southern State University,

which fortunately did not suffer significant damage.

The Joplin High School building, however,

suffered a direct hit.

The Joplin tornado destroyed 4,380 homes

and damaged an additional 3,884.

It tore structures off their foundations,

leaving only anchor bolts on the ground.

Even buildings with pre-cast concrete walls

suffered partial or complete collapse.

The area affected by the tornado

was comprised of almost 30 percent of the city

and generated some 2.3 million cubic meters of debris.

The tornado also caused serious damage

to several healthcare facilities.

In the case of St. John’s Regional Medical Center,

along with significant structural damage,

five patients and one visitor tragically died.

The hospital’s emergency helicopter

was also completely destroyed.

You’re talking on the orders of maybe tens of minutes

to half an hour or something.

You want people to be there as quickly as possible,

but obviously you have these mitigating factors.

You’ve got trees down,

you’ve got this scene of devastation

you have to navigate your way through.

So it’s not just the simple question

of getting the right people to the injured,

and worse than that, on time,

it’s the fact that oftentimes

they can’t get there as quickly as they’d like to,

and this helps, or this pushes the number up,

a lot further in time,

in the hours or so after the event.

After the tornado passed,

ambulances and crews arrived quickly at the scene.

Emergency responders from areas all around southwest Missouri

were summoned to report to a command post

at 34th and Main,

to help deal with the damage and destruction.

In the immediate aftermath of the tornado,

members of the public,

many of whom had just seen their own homes destroyed,

searched through the debris for survivors.

Many of the paramedics answering calls

found it virtually impossible to recognize streets

which had once been very familiar.

Fires caused by gas leaks lit up the night sky.

It was like a war zone.

Hundreds of electricity transmission poles had fallen,

forcing much of the devastated city

to endure the tornado’s aftermath without power.

Phone communications in and out of Joplin

were largely cut off.

Downed trees and power lines added to the debris

blocking many streets in Joplin,

making them impassable for the emergency services.

Clearing those became a priority,

and the fire service called for extra heavy equipment

and front loaders to help shift the debris.

As the roads freed up,

the movement of emergency vehicles throughout the city

gradually improved.

Extra police were called up to help with security.

Highway Patrol troopers moved swiftly

to become a visible presence,

both to reassure shaken survivors

and to prevent opportunistic crime.

Some 9,000 people were displaced.

The extreme destruction forced thousands of residents

to seek refuge with family or friends.

The American Red Cross established a shelter

at the Missouri Southern State University

for some 300 residents made homeless by the tornado.

The university served as the base

for many first responders.

Some of the city’s undamaged school buildings

were also opened as shelters for the displaced.

That Sunday night,

Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency

and announced the deployment of the National Guard

in response to the deadly disaster.

Not much more than 12 hours after the tornado touched down,

nearly 500 firefighters,

public works personnel,

and other municipal employees volunteered for duty.

Teams of searchers fanned out across several square miles

of smoking wasteland.

They went house to house,

plot to plot, checking for survivors,

listening out for anyone

who might have been trapped under their fallen homes.

If they came upon a room that was still standing,

they marked the wall outside as they went in to search

and crossed the mark to show that it was all clear.

Collapsed buildings which had been thoroughly searched

were marked in a highly visible red paint.

Even wrecked cars were marked.

Everywhere it was conceivable

that a person could have been trapped

was marked with a cross if it was all clear,

or a V if it contained a victim.

Specialized emergency response teams,

including Missouri’s Disaster Medical Assistance Team,

were sent to provide aid and assistance

to the tornado-stricken town.

In the days following the catastrophe,

the official government effort

was geared towards search and rescue,

as opposed to cleaning up,

so the tornado’s 10-kilometer path

still resembled a war zone.

In all, 17 people were pulled alive

from the contorted remains of homes, shops, and offices.

Rescuers continued to sift through the debris,

desperately searching for survivors,

but more often than not, finding only corpses.

Four days after the disaster, 125 bodies had been recovered.

Considering that 232 people were still unaccounted for,

they expected the grim toll to rise.

EF-5, or the highest level of tornadoes,

constitute about one in a thousand of all storms,

and this was the level of the Joplin tornado,

so even though in the U.S.

they get these really intense and violent storms a lot,

seemingly, it’s still relatively rare for any one location

to receive or to be impacted by one of these.

So the National Weather Service went back

and did a particular assessment of this event

to try and work out why.

So they gave their warnings on time, people were warned,

but assessment of the event and the aftermath was that

because this was such a rare and exceptional event,

despite the warnings,

people were a bit blasé about reacting straightaway,

and this is something that probably contributed

to the death toll being as high as it was.

There were many personal tragedies.

A 16-month-old boy had been pulled from his mother’s arms

when the tornado ripped her home apart.

The search for the missing child had been followed

on news items and social media across the nation.

But hopes were dashed when his body was found,

buried amongst the rubble.

Those on the frontlines in Joplin

continued treating the injured and searching for bodies,

all the while facing

the psychological challenges of dealing with devastation

most of them had never even imagined.

When it became clear

that there were no more bodies to recover,

four joint task forces were set up

to manage the largest recovery priorities:

housing,

schools,

critical infrastructure,

and debris removal.

They coordinated the disposal of hazardous household wastes

from the tornado’s impact zone,

as well as conducting air monitoring

for the presence of asbestos

and other dangerous dust matter.

Debris was spread far beyond the city limits of Joplin.

An open Facebook group was set up

for people finding debris away from the Joplin area,

to help send back items of personal importance

to people who may well have lost everything in the tornado.

We know how hard it was,

and we know what a long road of recovery

it’s going to be for them.

But... we know

that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel.

One week after the storm,

President Obama visited the city

to see the damage for himself.

At a memorial service,

he let the people of Joplin know they were not alone,

their tragedy was a national tragedy

and everything possible was going to be done

to help continue with the rescue and recovery effort.

This has been such a devastating and traumatic experience

for all of us in Joplin,

and people have reached out to us from all over the world,

and it has helped us become a better community.

And the response that people have given to Joplin

helps us see the hope for the future of Joplin.

Following the President’s visit,

the Federal Emergency Management Agency

established 15 temporary housing sites

throughout the area.

At its peak, it was home

to 586 families and households.

Through the first year of recovery,

the agency provided nearly 21 million dollars in grants

to help victims pay for home repairs, temporary housing,

and other critical disaster-related needs.

In the aftermath of the disaster,

it was estimated that more than 140,000 registered volunteers

provided nearly 900,000 hours of service.

AmeriCorps, a voluntary civil society program

supported by both public and private donations,

also made a long-term commitment

to the recovery efforts.

In the year following the disaster,

more than 350 AmeriCorps members

from across the United States served in Joplin,

aiding homeowners and coordinating donations.

The tornado that brought chaos and death to Joplin

surpassed the 8th of June, 1953 tornado

that claimed 116 lives in Flint, Michigan,

making it the deadliest single tornado

to strike the U.S.

since modern record keeping began in 1950.

There has been a decline in the number

of tornado-related deaths

in the United States over the past century.

I think the reason for this could be because

people know more about tornadoes,

are more aware of them, are more aware of what to do,

and also because the National Weather Service

has an early warning system in place.

So the average lead time for a tornado is 13 minutes,

and that gives people enough time to take shelter.

On the fifth anniversary

of the disaster,

the city organized Joplin Proud:

four days of events

to recognize an unforgettable date in their history.

Guest speakers shared

what the city had learned from the storm.

A marathon, a kid’s run,

and a walk of silence were held to commemorate the tragedy

and to celebrate the regeneration

and rebuilding of their town.

A permanent memorial was laid out,

with a plaque listing the names of all the lives lost.

It also contains an illustration

detailing the path of the tornado,

as well as the haunting outlines of two houses

that had once stood in its place.

It’s not just that you need to be able

to accurately forecast a tornado...

it’s that you need to make sure that the public are responding

to those warnings in the way that you want them to.

And this is a more challenging thing,

’cause that draws an aspect of social science as well,

it’s not just you have your equations

and you work them out in the atmosphere,

and that’s fine-- it involves more of

a cross-disciplinary approach to science,

and that’s something that is not always as easy to get right.

So, oftentimes groups may be focused on their particular area

and then interacting with these other scientific groups is,

doesn’t always come naturally to people,

so that, I think, is probably the biggest challenge,

probably on a par with the actual science

of what is going on inside the storm.

Cunningham Park,

which had been destroyed and rebuilt in the wake

of the tornado, was dedicated to the volunteers.

A robust metallic plaque was constructed to honor

all those who "offered themselves to the Joplin effort

without request, serving as a reminder

of the overwhelming power of human generosity."

It was named "The Miracle of the Human Spirit."

We’re now in a point where you can have

really, really detailed simulations of tornadoes.

This was unimaginable, say, 50 or so years ago.

We’re talking several orders of magnitude, smaller now.

It still won’t be perfect,

’cause any time you have storms or what’s known as convection,

you have a kind of random element to it.

So it’s never...

There’s always gonna be some secrets

that the atmosphere will keep basically,

but, generally, we’re much closer

to being able to predict

the degree of intensification of tornadoes,

and the timing of intensification of tornadoes,

and these are the most important things for people on the ground.

Joplin residents share a deeply held desire

not to forget the tragedies that befell them

during that fateful May in 2011.

They and all those who came to their aid

are a testament to the strength of the human spirit

when faced with the brutal side of Mother Nature.

Their story is yet another reminder

of the deadly disasters

that continue to threaten our homes

and our lives.