Fifteen years ago, on May 22, 2011, an EF-5 tornado tore through the center of Joplin, Missouri. It became the single deadliest tornado in modern history, claiming the lives of 158 people and causing immense structural damage to the city. One of the most significant structural damages was to St. John's Hospital.
Healthcare workers in the surrounding areas quickly sprang into action when the tornado struck.
Kevin Kepley was working as a nurse at St. John's Hospital.. He was about to leave his shift in the late afternoon when someone told him storms were heading toward Joplin. He began preparing patients for severe weather.
Then the tornado hit —and everything went dark.
"And we looked out the window and saw the rain was coming in horizontally, and we could see that debris," Kepley said.
The building shook for about two minutes. Kepley and the rest of the staff kept an eye on the patients and themselves. Debris was flying throughout the building.
Nearly the entire hospital was damaged in some way after the storm subsided. Regular facilities became unusable. Patients were evacuated and later triaged to nearby hospitals in Joplin and Northwest Arkansas.
Donna Stokes was one of the physicians who began working as soon as she arrived at the damaged hospital. She went inside to try to salvage anything, but the process for caring for patients completely shifted in the aftermath of the tornado.
Within a week, a sixty-bed high tech medical tent was up and running. There was an emergency room and a tent with surgical capabilities.
Stokes said everything became 'ground zero.' They had to adapt to minimal supplies and amenities. The sewer system was unusable, so they resorted to using kitty litter for bodily secretions.
"Everybody's process changed," she said. "There was no running water. We had portable hand sinks. So it was a completely different world for everyone."
Another healthcare worker, Becky Tillman, likened the triage unit to a MASH tent — a reference to the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals used during the Korean War.
She worked as an orthopedic nurse at St. John's in 2011, but was off-duty on May 22.
She got a call from her son, asking if she was at work. She then quickly called the hospital and an operator said the damage was 'top to bottom.'
"There were people just in the streets crying and screaming," Tillman said. "And it was quite traumatic because, like, going into a war zone kind of."
She said within the first few hours after the tornado struck, injured people were directed toward Memorial Hall as a triage area. She helped treat patients as they arrived and delegated patients to other hospitals. Patients were covered in an unknown substance, either sawdust or dirt.
Some were impaled by either wood from a house or bark from a tree. The storm blew the bark off the trees, so it was unclear where the wood came from.
Tillman said the experience made her a better nurse.
"We needed everybody that was there, and everybody had their experiences to help the whole system work. Then every day it got a little, you know, easier," Tillman said.
St. John's demolition started just eight months after the tornado struck. The new hospital opened its doors on May 23, 2015.
To the naked eye, the damage is barely visible 15 years later. But to the survivors, volunteers and healthcare workers, the scars of May 22, 2011, remain.
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