Deadly tornadoes hit the Midwest
Asked about a report that 24 people had died, city spokeswoman Lynn Onstot said grimly that officials were "afraid it may be more. ... Our fear is that's a low number." The Missouri National Guard planned to search for the injured throughout the night.
"You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," said Kerry Sachetta, the principal of a flattened Joplin High School. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn't believe what I saw."
The same storm system that produced the Joplin tornado spawned twisters along a broad swath of the Midwest, from Oklahoma to Wisconsin. At least one person was killed in Minneapolis. But the devastation in Missouri appeared to be the worst of the day, eerily reminiscent the tornadoes that killed more than 300 people across the South last month.
Onstot said the twister - believed to be between one-half to three-quarters of a mile wide - was on the ground for nearly four miles. It hit a hospital packed with patients and a commercial area including a Home Depot construction store, numerous smaller businesses and restaurants and a grocery store. An untold number of homes were destroyed and reduced to ruin.
Among the worst hit locations in Joplin was St. John's Regional Medical Center, which appeared to suffer a direct hit from a tornado. The staff had just a few moments' notice to hustle patients into hallways before the storm struck the multistory building, blowing out hundreds of windows and leaving the facility useless.In the parking lot, a helicopter lay crushed on its side, its rotors torn apart and windows smashed. Nearby, a pile of cars lay crumpled into a single mass of twisted metal. Matt Sheffer dodged downed power lines, trees and closed streets to make it to his dental office across from the hospital.
"My office is totally gone. Probably for two to three blocks, it's just leveled," he said. "The building that my office was in was not flimsy. It was 30 years old and two layers of brick. It was very sturdy and well built."
All of St. John's patients were quickly evacuated and moved to other hospitals in the region, said Cora Scott, a spokeswoman for the medical center's sister hospital in Springfield. She had no details on any deaths or injuries suffered at the hospital in the tornado strike.
Missouri authorities said they could confirm that people had died in Joplin, but the exact number was unknown late Sunday. Details about fatalities and injuries were difficult to obtain even for emergency management officials, because the tornado knocked out power, landline phones and some cellphone towers, said Greg Hickman, assistant emergency management director in Newton County.
Triage centers and shelters were setup around the city of about 50,000 people about 160 miles south of Kansas City. At Memorial Hall, a downtown entertainment venue, nurses and other emergency workers from area hospitals were treating critically injured patients.
The storm that hit Joplin spread debris about 60 miles away, with medical records, X-rays, insulation and other items falling to the ground in Greene County, said Larry Woods, assistant director of the Springfield-Greene County Office of Emergency Management.
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