SUMMARY: At least 25 people were killed when tornadoes tore through central Tennessee early Tuesday. The storms blasted downtown Nashville and damaged or destroyed at least 140 buildings, including some Super Tuesday polling stations. Four counties reported storm-related deaths, hospitals treated dozens of injuries and rescue crews searched for missing people amid the rubble. Stephanie Sy reports.
SUMMARY: A string of tornadoes cut a path of destruction across parts of Ohio and Indiana Monday night. The twisters, some with winds of 140 miles per hour, flattened entire neighborhoods, killing at least one person and wounding dozens more. Millions are without power as officials scramble to uncover the scope of the damage and encourage residents to check on their neighbors. Judy Woodruff reports.
SUMMARY: Severe weather is devastating the American Heartland. Spring storms have led to at least eight deaths in Oklahoma, which has been hit by tornadoes and record rain. With more precipitation expected, state officials are closely watching levee systems for signs of a potentially catastrophic failure. Judy Woodruff speaks by phone with Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt about managing the situation.
SUMMARY: Violent weather has tormented regions from the Rocky Mountains to the Mid-Atlantic in recent weeks. In Kansas Tuesday night, strong tornadoes tore houses apart, littered an airport runway with debris and hoisted a car onto a roof -- but widespread flooding may be the biggest and most prolonged threat. William Brangham talks to atmospheric scientist Victor Gensini about the brutal spring weather.
William Brangham (NewsHour): My understanding is, there's been some reporting that climate change perhaps might be shifting where certain tornadoes might be hitting, hitting places that are not used to them.
Is that right?
Victor Gensini, Northern Illinois University: That's exactly right.
We did a study last October that looked at, well, the number of tornadoes across the United States really hasn't changed very much over the last 40 years, but where they're happening has been changing.
So places like Tornado Alley, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, we have been seeing a downward trend in some of those locations, and an increasing trend further to east in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and portions of the Midwest, which is a big deal for population density and vulnerability, of course, the exposure, as we have many more people living east of the Mississippi River.
SUMMARY: The U.S. has experienced its wettest 12-month period on record. Scientists warn that climate change is causing more intense storms, resulting in increased flooding risk for millions of Americans living near rivers and along the coasts. How can vulnerable communities prepare? Special correspondent Cat Wise reports on a radical approach some are exploring: relocation of the towns themselves.
SUMMARY: Officials have released the names of 23 people confirmed dead from a tornado that hit Lee County, Alabama, on Sunday. Rescue efforts are winding down, though many residents will face a long road to recovery after losing homes and livelihoods to the 170 mile-per-hour winds. John Yang reports and Judy Woodruff talks to Mayor F.L. “Bubba” Copeland of Smiths Station, one of the hardest hit areas.
SUMMARY: The tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 was one of the most destructive in U.S. history. Five years later, the city seems to be thriving -- possibly even better off than it was before. One key to its success? Getting residents to stay, says Jane Cage, chair of the Citizens Advisory Recovery Team. But the emotional trauma from that day still lingers. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Storms, hurricanes and natural disasters clearly test the fortitude of any area, as we're seeing this weekend with Hermine, and just recently with the rains and flooding in Louisiana.
We tend to focus on the immediate aftermath and relief, but the devastation can last for years.
We have the story of how one city leveled by a tornado has spent years rebuilding, and in some ways is better and stronger for the future.
The tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2011 was one of the most destructive ever in U.S. history; 161 people were killed, 1,000 were injured, and more than 7,000 homes were damaged.
When the “NewsHour” visited four months later, people were still literally picking up the pieces of their lives.
JANE CAGE, Chair, Citizens Advisory Recovery Team: It is certainly clean, compared with what it used to be.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Jane Cage, a businesswoman who chaired the Citizens Advisory Council to rebuild Joplin, told us back then she was worried people wouldn't come back to the destroyed areas.
JANE CAGE: In the beginning, I think everyone said, I want to rebuild my house. And now I think people are faced with the reality that what they wanted, their neighborhood and their friends may not be in that same spot.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Five years later, Cage took us on a tour of the same neighborhood.
JANE CAGE: I think this is, in some ways, one of the best recovered neighborhoods. They're nicer houses and larger houses overall.
HARI SREENIVASAN: She says one of the main things that Joplin got right in the aftermath was encouraging residents to stay.
JANE CAGE: We concentrated on keeping our population in Joplin, because we saw what happened in other cities that experienced disasters. And I think one of the first things that we did to make that happen was, our school superintendent made the promise that we would start school on time.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Finally tonight, chasing storms, science, and risk.
The National Weather Service said Friday's deadly tornado near Oklahoma City was stronger than initially reported. Meteorologists now classify it as an EF-5, the strongest ranking possible, with winds of 295 miles per hour. It was also the widest twister ever recorded, 2.6 miles. The storm and subsequent flooding killed 18 people.
Ray Suarez has more.
MAN: Tornado on the ground. Large tornado on the ground.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): A storm chaser sounded the alert Friday evening as the enormous black funnel filled the dark sky just west of Oklahoma City.
Three of those killed were storm chasers themselves, Tim Samaras, 54, his son Paul, 24, and Carl Young, who was 45. They were working for the Discovery Channel. This was all that remained of their truck after it was caught in the open.
A colleague says escape was all but impossible.
BEN MCMILLAN, Storm Chaser: It was a really wild tornado. It was rapidly evolving. There was multiple tornadoes that turned into one larger tornado. And then the larger tornado went one way and then switched directions very quickly and went another way. It was just a really hard storm to track.
RAY SUAREZ: Indeed, this Weather Channel vehicle was picked up by the same storm and hurled 200 yards. Only one of its chase team of three was seriously hurt. It was all testimony to how inherently dangerous this profession is. But another colleague says Tim Samaras was known for his caution.
PAUL STOFER, Storm Chaser: He really knew what he was doing. He didn't chase for the notoriety or the television or selling video. He chased because he genuinely wanted to learn more about severe weather.
RAY SUAREZ: The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., says the men killed Friday appear to be the first scientific researchers to die in pursuit of tornadoes.
SUMMARY: The death of three storm researchers in Oklahoma helps spotlight the risks involved in studying extreme weather. Ray Suarez talks with Howard Bluestein of the University of Oklahoma for more about chasing storms, dangers for both amateurs and professional scientists and some unexpected challenges (like traffic jams).
SUMMARY: In Moore, Okla., residents of the town devastated by a powerful tornado began surveying damage and assessing losses. Rescue crews combed through rubble through the night, searching for survivors in a disaster that has so far claimed 24 lives. Gwen Ifill reports on the grueling efforts to recover after the storm.
SUMMARY: A monster tornado nearly flattened the town of Moore, Okla. Jeffrey Brown gets reaction from Time Magazine's Jay Newton-Small, Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of the Moore Police Department, and Bob Henson from the National Center for Atmospheric Research about the devastation, the latest rescue efforts and the science behind the mighty storm.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now, the city of Joplin, Mo., rebuilds and remembers one year after it was leveled by a deadly twister.
This was Joplin one year ago, after a tornado packing 200-an-hour winds tore through town. It killed 161 people, injured hundreds more, and destroyed 8,000 buildings, many of them homes. This is how the city of 50,000 looks today. Three million cubic yards of debris have been hauled away. Damaged homes have been torn down, leaving empty foundations.
Others have been rebuilt, but at a cost. The storm caused $2.8 billion in damage, the costliest tornado since 1950. And emotional, physical and psychological scars remain.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Tornadoes raked the Midwest and South today for the second time this week. At least three people were killed in Indiana, and towns in four states were hard-hit.
Throughout the day, sightings of funnel clouds, like this one in Alabama, kept coming. One of the worst hit late this afternoon, blasting two towns in Southern Indiana. A sheriff reported the town of Marysville, home to 1,900 people, was completely gone. And nearby Henryville was nearly as bad.
Other storms also caused damage north of Louisville, Ky., near Chattanooga, Tenn. and just outside Huntsville, Ala.
In Bradley County, Tenn., near Chattanooga, high winds tore down the wall of a hardware store and knocked over several tractor-trailers.
YAZOO CITY, Miss. — Just over a year ago, when the 170-mile-an-hour winds of a deadly tornado ripped the eastern stretch of this town to shreds, Noreene Girard could do nothing but cry.
“The trauma of it was unbearable,” she said, recalling the devastation that struck this struggling part of the Delta region that was already no stranger to the blues. The tornado spun on to damage 300 homes, kill 10 people and cause $50 million in damage in an eastward path across the state, earning its place as the worst natural disaster in Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina.
But this week, Ms. Girard was shedding tears of a different sort, as members of Hillcrest Baptist Church hoisted a fresh white steeple above the timber frame that is to be their new sanctuary. It was a moment that, to Ms. Girard and others, felt like a crowning achievement against the storm, an entire year in the making.
“To be down for so long and finally feel that you are coming back up?” she said. “I just started to cry.”
Alton Rivers, a church member, said, “It makes your heart swell.”
The healing that has taken place here is only just beginning in the rest of the region, as cities and towns continue to search for the missing and assess the destruction spawned last week by a barrage of tornadoes from Texas to Virginia. One Mississippi town, Smithville, was virtually erased from the map.
“Our hearts go out to them,” said Mayor McArthur Straughter of Yazoo City.
In Mr. Straughter’s city, though, a year later, people have begun to celebrate small victories in their brick-and-mortar recovery, which, by many accounts, has progressed with speed thanks to a can-do population at ease with heavy lifting and a friendly government. (Gov. Haley Barbour grew up in these parts, and some members of his extended family still call Yazoo City home.)
Where the wind damaged about a quarter of the town on April 24, 2010, there is activity again. Ribeye’s Steak House rebuilt and reopened, and the meat is sizzling.
Women wait for haircuts at the reconstructed Just My Style day spa, where Angie Rhoads, the owner, and 18 customers survived the tornado by huddling around the shampoo bowl as the salon collapsed around them.
Ninety percent of the damaged housing has been rebuilt, and the remaining physical scars — cracked trees, more open space — are apparent only if one focuses on finding them.
What is mortally wounded in this capital of cotton and corn, though, is something deeper, that Southern sense of peace in one’s place, of being one with the land and the elements. So as the people of Yazoo City, population 14,000, took stock of their lives in thankful remembrance, they could not put the April 2010 tornado into the past just yet. They were busy packing boxes of supplies to send to the latest victims, and keeping an eye on floods from the Mississippi River and its swollen tributaries, water that forecasters say is coming Yazoo County’s way.
Evacuations have begun. Officials are being frank about the risks: levees will be topped and cause problems for the region.
“I know I have a lot to be thankful for,” said Ms. Rhoads, 44. “First of all, I’m alive. My business is back. But a flood is coming? Let me tell you: when it thunders, I have a nervous breakdown. I freak out and panic every time I hear something like that.”
Her dog does, too. Lulu, a Chihuahua, lost her hearing in the tornado last year and throws up every time the weather turns.
“It’s been a hard year,” said Wendy Riley, 37, an employee at Just My Style. “I’ve felt lucky, devastated, numb. I guess I didn’t start feeling healthy again until September.”
Ms. Riley said she is relatively content now, her home rebuilt and her children recovering from the trauma of being tossed about by the wind, but she is changed. “I don’t make plans anymore; I live day to day,” she said. “I used to worry myself to death with plans about the future. No more. The future is anybody’s guess.”
Like so many others, Ms. Riley thought about leaving the Delta when her house crumbled and her daughter, Brianna, 15, ended up in a children’s hospital 45 minutes away, battling post-traumatic stress. But she was heartened by the support of her family and friends, and hesitated about leaving her large network behind. There were financial realities, too: “Every door that opened also closed,” she said. “After we paid our mortgage off with insurance money, we didn’t have much left.”
The remains of the house were bulldozed into a backyard gully, and a new three-bedroom modular home rose on the old foundation. It is starting to feel cozy now, and a low-interest loan has helped the family’s finances. “I do love the new house,” she said. “My faith has been renewed. It’s been a healing experience, and I feel like I was meant to be here.”
Ms. Rhoads feels similarly about her salon. “It’s a rock,” she said. As for her home, that is a different story. A place she rents while repairs are being finished on her home in Yazoo County is in the flood zone, so she is on the run again, trying to salvage her family’s belongings.
Asked what she has learned from the yearlong ordeal, she said: “The hardest part for me was accepting help. It’s been hard for me to say, ‘I do need help.’ ”
Pressed for more information, Ms. Rhoads’s mood turned somber and she said, “I don’t like to talk about it.” With that, she began working on another customer’s hair. Ten others waited, but some were just there for the company, the talk therapy disguised as chitchat that happens every day.
Just down Bus Station Road at the Hillcrest Baptist Church construction site, the faithful were all smiles in their work boots, bracing floorboards and cutting wood. The new sanctuary will be bigger and better than the old one, according to the plans. The church received a good insurance payout, and donations have been coming from all over. (One came from an anonymous couple in Australia, $40 cash.)
“There’s a sadness while you’re cleaning up for several months,” said Mr. Rivers, 71. “But as soon as you start to see new buildings going up, houses being renovated and businesses coming back, then your mood starts to change.”
Only one thing robs Mr. Rivers of his newfound high these days: television news footage of the latest post-tornado suffering. “Makes me sick to my stomach looking at what they’re going through,” he said. “The memories.”
Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.
A day after enduring a terrifying bombardment of storms that killed hundreds across the South and spawned tornadoes that razed neighborhoods and even entire towns, people from Texas to Virginia to Georgia searched through rubble for survivors on Thursday and tried to reclaim their own lives.
At least 285 people across six states died in the storms, with more than half — 195 people — in Alabama. This college town, the home of the University of Alabama, has in some places been shorn to the slab, and accounts for at least 36 of those deaths.
Thousands have been injured, and untold more have been left homeless, hauling their belongings in garbage bags or rooting through disgorged piles of wood and siding to find anything salvageable.
While Alabama was hit the hardest, the storm spared few states across the South. Thirty-four people were reported dead in Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 7 in Virginia and one in Kentucky. With search and rescue crews still climbing through debris and making their way down tree-strewn country roads, the toll is expected to rise.
