Questionnaire surveys administered among tornado survivors and informal discussions with emergency management personnel and others suggest that five reasons are associated with the high number of tornado fatalities experienced in Joplin: (1) the sheer magnitude of this event (2) its path through commercial and densely populated residential areas (3) the relatively large size of damage area (4) the physical characteristics of affected homes in Joplin and (5) the fact that some residents ignored tornado warnings. This study explores the reasons for the high number of fatalities caused by the 2011 Joplin tornado. The record number of deaths caused by the single tornado in Joplin was far higher than the average annual number of US tornado deaths over the last three decades. This tornado stands as the deadliest single tornado to hit the United States since modern recordkeeping began in 1950, surpassing the tornado of 8 June 1953 that claimed 116 lives in Flint, Michigan. Read more of Slate’s coverage of the Oklahoma tornado.On the evening of, an EF-5 tornado tore a path six miles long across Joplin, Missouri, USA, killing 162 people as it passed through the heart of the city. Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.Įxplainer thanks Larry Tanner of the National Wind Institute at Texas Tech University. Though many photos appear to show whole neighborhoods flattened by the storm, the NWI’s Larry Tanner suggests that if you don’t see any aboveground shelters standing, they were probably never there at all. Even if you already have a basement (though many Oklahoma houses do not have basements, because of soil conditions and other factors), many kinds of basements do not provide sufficient protection, and so the NWI suggests that you still build a safe room, possibly within the basement. These in-residence safe rooms can be installed in homes for about $2,500, with $2,000 of that cost- at least in theory-being reimbursed by FEMA, whose guidelines for building a safe room are available online. This is primarily because many people are killed or injured by flying debris while they’re en route to their outdoor shelters, especially if they have little warning or leave it to the last minute to make their way to the cellar.
Though NWI also tests and approves some designs for stand-alone storm cellars, FEMA and the NWI suggest that shelters be installed as safe rooms inside of family residences. Additionally, planks torn from houses are the predominant objects found in the debris fields of large tornadoes, making them the ideal objects for testing.
Of course, larger and heavier objects, such as tin roofs and barns, could be found in such a tornado, but the heavier something is, the slower it travels, so it’s unlikely that they would hit with any more force than these 15-pound wooden missiles. To test shelter designs, the NWI shoots them with 15-foot-long wooden 2-by-4s propelled at 100 miles per hour, approximating the force of debris in a tornado with 250 mph winds. In 1999, only one year after FEMA published its modern standards for in-residence shelters, an above-ground shelter survived the record-breaking F5 tornado around Oklahoma City, which also passed through Moore. In the case of the EF5 tornado that touched down in Joplin, Mo., in 2011, the deadliest twister in decades, all 11 aboveground shelters in the area protected their occupants. While other storm shelters may be old or poorly designed in the first place, the shelters approved by the NWI are designed to withstand winds up to 250 mph, which includes nearly all recorded tornadoes (including Monday’s) and most tornadoes rated as EF5s on the Enhanced Fujita scale. While there are several recorded instances of powerful storms ripping open the doors to storm cellars and other shelters, no such instance has been documented with a shelter tested and approved by the National Wind Institute (NWI) at Texas Tech University.
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