![]() For a few seconds, everything is normal: orderly rows of chairs and a stack of magazines on a table. John’s ER waiting room shows how everything was destroyed. The whole process took about 45 seconds, but seemed like eternity.”Įerie security footage of a St. We could feel a tight pressure in our heads as the tornado annihilated the hospital and the surrounding area. “We suffered this in complete darkness, unaware of anyone else’s status, worried, scared. “The whole hospital shook and vibrated as we heard glass shattering, light bulbs popping, walls collapsing, people screaming, the ceiling caving in above us, and water pipes breaking, showering water down on everything,” emergency room doctor Kevin Kitka wrote later in a blog post. But the hospital’s windows shattered, destroying the interior. In newspaper pictures, it rose out of the flattened rubble, one of the only buildings left standing. In the 2011, the outer building in Joplin remained intact. Windows - the very things that make the new Festus hospital wing seem so different than the old - are the feature that make hospitals the most vulnerable. Since then, the health company has strengthened its construction methods and disaster plans to include storm-resistant materials and backup generators. “We plan for if we lose power, if we lose water, we plan for a lot of emergencies, but we never plan to just lose everything,” John Farnen, Mercy’s vice president of facilities said of the Joplin tornado.īut in the Joplin storm, the Mercy hospital did lose everything. For Mercy officials, creating modern-day fortresses is essential to keeping the communities they serve safe. Mercy has hospitals through Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, in the middle of Tornado Alley, where these violent storms are most frequent. Since then, Mercy has made it a mission to build safer hospitals, with stronger windows, walls and power sources. Six people died in the hospital that day.
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