The tornado touched down in Joplin, Missouri late in the afternoon on May 22nd, 2011. These photographs were taken on the anniversary of the storm, May 23rd, 2012. Despite the President’s visit that day and the “Walk of Unity†that occurred that morning, the city is still, one year later, struggling to recover. Many of the residents are no longer living in the most devastated areas, having moved to Webb City, which is now home to rows upon rows of gleaming white FEMA trailers. At the end of each gravel road stands a tornado shelter built to withstand 250mph winds. Virtually none of the homes in Joplin had any kind of protection from the storm, lacking basements or shelters, their concrete foundations the only sign left of many of them. The older neighborhoods farther away from St. John’s Hospital and its encampment of national weather and news crews faced severe damage that is evident to this day. Hundreds of messages on the shells of houses served as a means of communication between residents of the city after the storm, emergency personnel spray-painting them with cryptic symbols spelling out the status of the owners similar to what happened in the aftermath of Katrina. Some of them still remain. One in particular assures that despite the long road ahead, “He has already worked it out.†I hope that’s true. As the media interest wanes, much of what becomes of the city will depend in large part on a new generation of children growing up there, and their struggle will take place outside the photo ops, in difficult circumstances like those found in Webb City.
Near what used to be Joplin High School (now a mountain of scrap metal amidst the new construction) still stands a single house without walls. In the yard, beside the open-air kitchen and living room, a child’s stuffed animal lies exposed to the elements, bleached by the sun. To me it represents more than anything the mixture of sadness, loss and yet, somehow, hope left behind in the tornado’s wake.