评论
打印
We start today with a celebration. In a central U.S. city of about 50,000 people, folks are going to work. High school and college students recently graduated. A memorial run was held over the weekend.
That sounds like a slice of life in any American city but it's particularly meaningful here. This is Joplin, Missouri, a community that has been rebuilt after being hit by the deadliest tornado this century. It struck 10 years ago on May 22nd.
Its wind speeds were greater than 200 miles per hour making it an EF-5 tornado, the strongest classification on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. In some places the twister was a mile wide. So big that one witness said it looked like a thunderstorm.
Some people in Joplin might not have taken shelter immediately because false alarms had sounded over the years. Many others didn't really have a safe place to go. Affiliate WDRB reports that 82 percent of the homes in Joplin didn't have basements or storm shelters when the tornado struck and the bathrooms and closets people went to didn't provide enough protection.
The tornado was on the ground for 22 miles. It destroyed almost 30 percent of Joplin, 161 people were killed, more than 1,000 were injured, 7,500 homes and 500 businesses were either damaged or destroyed. With damage estimates exceeding $3 billion, this was the costliest tornado to hit the U.S. since record keeping began in 1950.
