3+4PM The Joplin Tornado

When I was in St. Louis for the past week and a half, the story that occupied everyone’s mind and took up tons of radio conversation was the category 5 tornado that demolished the Missouri town of Joplin, a city of about 50,000 people. It had 200mph winds, and all the accounts agree that the structures in the city were razed to the ground in a devastation that isn’t even normally true of war zones, where you can at least still recognize what used to be there. Unlike many tornadoes that level some areas and leave others untouched, this one seems to have gotten everything that could be eradicated, leaving only massive structures like the hospital damaged but standing. The death toll today was confirmed at 134, making it the 8^th most deadly tornado in US history. But even in the midst of such a terrible storm, people all around the Midwest had responded immediately sending tons of financial assistance, supplies, and help (along with prayer) to Joplin. So, we’ll see how things go in the next few months, but this seems to be on track to be much more like the Nashville flood that no one ever heard of because they just handled it than some other places that didn’t recover so well. And the other thing that is amazing to me is that we live in a nation that is so wealthy and prosperous that almost any possession these people lost other than personal memorabilia can be replaced.