Destroyed hospital helped lead Joplin recovery with optimism

BY MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2012
5/20/12 at 8:33 AM

See videos, photo slideshows and all of the Tulsa World’s coverage about Joplin since the tornado hit the city.

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He could hear his wife's cry for help, but David Vanderhoofven couldn’t save her.

One of the deadliest storms in U.S. history had slammed Joplin, Mo., and Vanderhoofven’s wife and 13-month-old son were among the 161 killed. Hundreds more were injured. One year after the May 22 storm devastated the city, Vanderhoofven is like so many others in Joplin.

“Life is not back to normal,” he says. “I don’t think it ever will be, but it’s a new normal.”

Today, we catch up with some of the people rebuilding their lives and their city. The pastor who lost members of his congregation but rebuilt a church. A family who lost one home but gained another through help from Tulsans. A man who still visits the rubble pile that once was his home.

JOPLIN, Mo. - A day after the storm, in a small town 30 minutes south of the tornado's path, hospital administrators borrowed a conference room to debate the future of St. John's Regional Medical Center.

By then, the hospital had already become an iconic image, with newspapers around the world putting it on the front page and national newscasters using it as a backdrop.

The tornado had broken literally every window in the nine-story building and pushed the entire structure several inches off its foundation, making it look like something out of Berlin at the end of World War II.

Should they rebuild right away? Or wait to see how the rest of Joplin would bounce back?

"In a sense," remembered Scott Watson, vice president for human resources and support services, "we were talking about the recovery of the town itself."

Would Joplin push to rebuild quickly, bigger and better than before? Or take a slower, more cautious approach, accepting that the city might never be the same?

How the Joplin tornado progressed in intensity
The deadly tornado grew in strength from an EF-4 to an EF-5 as it neared St. John’s Medical Center.
Approximate beginning point - 1/2 mile southwest of the intersection of JJ Highway and west 32nd street (Newton Road).
Start time: 5:34 p.m. Reached the populated areas of Joplin at 5:41 p.m.
Approximate ending point - 4.8 miles NNE of Granby, Missouri.
End time: 6:12 p.m.

"We decided to be ambitious and optimistic," Watson said, describing that meeting in Neosho. "And that set the bar for everybody else."

Within days, the staff opened a makeshift hospital under an Army-style tent that was soon replaced with mobile trailers.

Renamed Mercy Hospital, it eventually moved into a 150,000-square-foot structure that looks permanent but is actually built out of prefabricated modular units that came to Joplin on the back of flat-bed trucks.

The modular site will remain in use until 2015, when a brand-new, 300-bed hospital will open on the edge of town.

The United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich nation in the Persian Gulf, donated $5 million Friday to build a pediatric department and a neonatal intensive care unit, a first for Joplin.

Meanwhile, the hospital has kept all 2,000 employees on the payroll, even if it meant lending some of them to other medical centers to keep them busy.

"When the city's biggest employer announced that we're not going to lose any employees," Watson said, "that pretty much set a tone that Joplin was not going to drop from 50,000 people to 30,000 overnight, like some people thought it would."

Joplin will mark the first anniversary of the storm Tuesday with a "Walk of Unity" through the worst-hit part of town, beginning at Walmart and heading about four miles west to Cunningham Park, near the old hospital.

Officials will plant the last of 161 trees in the park, one for each of the dead. And the commemoration will end with a moment of silence at precisely 5:41 p.m., the time when the tornado first hit a populated area.

President Barack Obama, revisiting for the first time since he toured the damage a year ago, will give the commencement address at Monday's high school graduation.

The May 22 tornado damaged or destroyed more than 7,500 homes. But 65 percent have been repaired or replaced, including 716 new homes, according to city records.

Officials recently unveiled a master plan to guide redevelopment in part of the tornado zone, including a stretch of Main Street, where the building code will promote walkability.

But, in general, the construction effort has emphasized speed over conformity, giving developers a lot of leeway.

As a result, new houses dot the landscape in a wide variety of styles and sizes, some big and modern, others small and traditional.

In between, a few pockets of rubble remain untouched, as if the tornado hit yesterday.

Dishes still sit on the kitchen counter. Rain-soaked tennis shoes still lie on the floor.

In one smashed house near the old Joplin High School - itself still a pile of debris - a wall leans against a piano.

And a Bible lies opens to 2 Corinthians 5:1: "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."

More than 300 people still live in FEMA trailers, most of them in trailer parks near the Joplin airport.

And volunteers are still coming from across the country to help rebuild.

"We'll be here another year, at least," said Don Marienthal with Samaritan's Purse, a volunteer group based in North Carolina. "To watch things changing and improving, it's so exciting, so uplifting."

More than 130,000 volunteers have worked nearly 810,500 hours, according to city estimates. That's the equivalent of 92 years of labor, 24-7.

No amount of work, however, can replace the urban forest that Joplin once enjoyed. The tornado zone lost 98 percent of its trees, and they will take at least a generation to come back.

"It's been a year, and you never get used to the emptiness," said Dolores Bilke, part of a local art group called The Tank. "It's a big slap in the face."

Using bright, cheerful colors, The Tank is painting a dead tree that remains standing, stripped of its bark, along one of the busiest streets in town.

"Brick buildings all around it toppled, but this tree stood," Bilke said. "We see it as a symbol of hope and strength. It's like Joplin - battered but not broken."

Original Print Headline: Hospital decision helped set bar for Joplin recovery

Michael Overall 918-581-8383
michael.overall@tulsaworld.com

Associated Images:

David Vanderhoofven stands at the site where his wife, Darian, and 13-month-old son, Joshua, died in the tornado that hit Joplin, Mo., a year ago. He planted a tree and on Mother’s Day placed a rose at the site. Vanderhoofven has a new wife, Linda (left), who attended church with him. They were married in March. MIKE SIMONS / Tulsa World

Scott Watson, Mercy Hospital's vice president for human resources and support services, can see the ruins of the old hospital building from the temporary administrative offices at a nearby bank. MIKE SIMONS / Tulsa World

Built from modular components that came to Joplin on the back of flat-bed trucks, the temporary Mercy Hospital offers all the comforts of a permanent building for Jessica Beaunoyer and her 1-day-old baby, Addisyn Ugalde. MIKE SIMONS / Tulsa World