So, earlier this week was the anniversary of the March 6, 2017 tornado. Our reporter in Oak Grove, Ruth Ann Hafner, put together a wonderful anniversary section for us. Her own place in this story is kind of remarkable.
Tornadoes have been my lifelong worst fear, but I never thought I'd actually see anything like what I saw the week of the storm: our friends and neighbors, throughout our coverage area, digging out and cleaning up, several friends losing their homes.
The storm hit on our deadline, so although we spent months telling the stories about those fast, hard days last March, I've never had a chance to really tell the whole story of what it was like for us, getting the paper out and trying to wrap our heads around what had happened. So, this is my chance.
While out seeing/photographing the damage Tuesday, I came across these two boys cleaning up damage from one of the most strikingly damaged homes. They lived around the corner, and their father had brought them to help out because their home was undamaged. They told me they thought it was "the least they could do." Thinking of a Mr. Rodgers quote, I titled the picture "The Helpers."
The day of the storm, I wasn't thinking about the weather. It was Monday, and I'd returned late the night before from the True/False film festival in Columbia. I went to Oak Grove that night for the Board of Aldermen meeting, where it was mentioned that Mark Sherwood, the Emergency Management Director, was in the "bunker" instead of at the meeting, watching the weather. I didn't think much of it. I went over to my sister's house after the meeting for dinner and to tell her about the weekend; it was windy and I knew a storm was coming, so I took the flag down from the front of the house and handed it to my confused brother-in-law when he answered the door.
We ate and talked, and then when the wind really picked up we started to consider whether I would try to outdrive the storm or wait it was there. We turned on the TV, looking for information. We probably tried three channels before one said the storm was half an hour away. Then the sirens went off.
The sirens in Oak Grove aren't like any I've heard anywhere else; rather than an air raid siren, they're several different tones, and although you can't discernibly hear it inside, they allow for the emergency management director to speak out over the loudspeaker. Don and I went outside as Hallie encouraged me to try to beat it back to Odessa, but we immediately knew something was off. The wind was nothing I had experienced before: it felt like it was rising, going up, so that even though the clouds were low it felt like we were under a high dome. I began to listen to the speaker, and heard that the storm was much closer than they said on the news. We agreed I wasn't going anywhere, and because at the time I had the newest car in the entire family and my sister drives a tin can, we switched the cars out so I was in the garage. Then, in uncharacteristic caution for my sister, we grabbed the kitten and went to the basement.
Back in the house, we got a call from my mom. I'm at Hallie and Don's. But it wasn't just asking where we were; one of the stations had said there was a tornado on the ground in Grain Valley. We didn't just need to be in the split level basement, we needed to be in the sub-basement.
I forgot about this picture Don took in the basement as we all joked about the storm on Facebook. Note Josey the Kitten in Hallie's arms. I honestly can't remember why I had a fire starter.
The idea of a tornado on the ground in Grain Valley was weird — usually they're to the south. But in my head, a tornado on the ground was like the EF-0 tornado that had come through in 2014: a few trees down, roof damage, maybe a little bit of structural damage. Don asked me what work would be like for me the next day, and I shrugged, saying it might be changing.
The power went out, so we entertained Josey the kitten with our phones, and talked, sitting on folding chairs in the unfinished sub-basement. Hallie disputes this, but at one point Don and I heard a noise and looked at each other. It was louder and deeper than a normal gust of wind, and had almost a churning quality to it. We only heard it for a second, then it was gone.
We stayed in the basement for a long time, hoping for the power to come back on. I think we charged the phones a little in the cars, but mine was trapped in the garage and we couldn't get the release to let it go. A steady parade of cars was going around Hallie and Don's neighborhood, which doesn't usually see traffic.
Somewhere around this time, I came across a Tweet from one of the Kansas City news stations showing that a duplex had been destroyed in Oak Grove. I was shocked, and a little confused. I couldn't find any more information, and wasn't going to bother first responders as they dealt with the problem at night; the beauty of a weekly deadline was that it could wait until morning. So I got enough charge on my phone to last me the night, changed my shoes into some tennis shoes I luckily had in my trunk and set out to drive my sister's tin can car home.
That drive is going to be vivid in my memory forever. I was finally forced to consider the scope of the problem when I looked left down Broadway and saw flashing lights everywhere. The entire town was out of power, and as I got on the interstate, it was empty, even though it was only 10 p.m. Along the highway, everything was dark, through Oak Grove, Bates City and on to Odessa. Businesses were dark, billboards were dark. I passed one business that was clearly on a generator, the brightest thing around. Once I got into Odessa, the Bank of Odessa was lit up as well, blindingly white against the dark town. My parents didn't know much, only that the tornado had hit Oak Grove.
The not so beautiful aspect of a weekly deadline is, it's there. And for the Focus on Oak Grove, it's Tuesday night, and the one for The Odessan follows on Wednesday at noon. I knew going to bed that night that whatever happened, I had to have it early, and the rest of what I needed to get done would have to get done around it.
Tuesday morning I woke up early and got ready quickly, unable to see much to worry about my appearance in the dark. The news started making its way to me: at least one neighborhood in Oak Grove was essentially gone.
I started in Odessa, checking in with city officials. A house had been knocked down, a giant tree was in another, a hundred people had gone to the wrong church for shelter and that church had been damaged but everyone was fine but it was still not great. The electric and water plants had taken a direct hit, and the intricacies of who supplies our power (KCPL) through what service (MPUA) meant that while they had been working all night, there still wasn't power. Without power, the city couldn't treat water, but hopefully that wouldn't become a problem. With nothing else to do, one of our employees grabbed a camera and started taking pictures. I got a call from Hallie: they had power. So I started up the tin can and headed back to Oak Grove.
I charged my phone and laptop in their house, it became my office for the morning. The first person I got ahold of was the Sni Valley fire chief, Carl Scarborough, who walked me through what they knew about the damage: hundreds of homes in the fire district, which includes Oak Grove, Bates City and the rural area in between, were destroyed. There were injuries, but nothing life threatening. Though he had been talking to news stations all morning, I think I was the first to ask for his personal narrative of the storm. He's the only person I've spoken to since who claims to have seen it, as he drove parallel to it on the highway as he returned from a child in his family's birthday party, reaching the fire station just as it took out the power.
Hallie and Don arrived back from breakfast (school had obviously been cancelled in both Oak Grove and Odessa, where Don teaches), bringing me a mocha that kept me going. After finishing it I went on to City Hall. In the driveway, back in my own car, I got a call on my cell phone. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver would be coming to both towns the next day. I said I'd likely only make the Odessa stop, because first I'd have to get past our deadline.
I had never seen the Oak Grove City Hall so busy, and what struck me immediately is that people I have only seen in suits were dressed down. Younger aldermen were out in the hallways, having been out to help. Already in the zone for the better part of the morning, I started asking questions, but one of my go-tos, usually on the ball with everything was absolutely dazed. I gave her a hug, and it started to become real to me: their hometown was wrecked.
I instead started asking Tim Mathes, the assistant city administrator, questions, and he immediately asked if I'd seen it yet. I said I hadn't, I had planned to ask the police to escort me after I left City Hall. He told me to go with him, and so I set out to see the damage.
Hallie and Don's neighborhood is in the pink box, the arrow is the general line of the storm.
This wasn't the first time Tim had been my Oak Grove tour guide. When I first started covering Oak Grove in 2014, I knew nothing, and after asking what must have been a particularly dumb string of questions about Frick Park when the new water tower was being built, Tim offered to drive me around to show me the construction site, and when he did he showed me the other park and other aspects of orienting myself. So he went from introducing me to Oak Grove to introducing me to its wreckage.
Two neighborhoods were really hit the hardest by the storm, south of the Civic Center where I had been for the Board of Aldermen meeting the night before. The neighborhood to the West of Broadway was where the worst of the damage was, residents weren't allowed back into that area Tuesday. I took pictures of the East side, and couldn't imagine how the damage could be worse. Only the pictures can really explain this part of the story.
One of the hardest parts about covering the tornado was knowing that we had friends affected. As we drove through the neighborhood, Tim pointed out the Schnieders' house, part of its top story ripped off. It didn't seem real.
I went on to try to see if I could find damage in Bates City, but every time I got close I came across a road block and a West Central Electric truck. My mom was calling periodically to ask if I'd heard anything on the electrical situation, and I hadn't. She sent me to buy backup equipment in case we needed to haul our ancient iMacs to the very small and not at all set up for this Focus office and put the papers together there; the delicacy of the server made this a particularly stressful situation. Finally, somewhere around Golden Belt, I got the call from my dad: power's back on, time to come back in.
Until a few years ago, everyone who got the Focus on Oak Grove got a copy of The Odessan, too. Splitting the papers had been a bit of a business ordeal. Because the papers were separated, the towns were so close together and I didn't really have time to write two stories.
While I had been at City Hall, they had learned that Missouri Governor Eric Greitens would be going to Oak Grove, but no one knew when. Well, it was that afternoon, and rather than contacting us, we were sent a few well-lit pictures of the Governor walking with the mayor and fire chief. He is not believed to have ever contacted the City of Odessa.
That was a problem, because even though the direct human toll was much less and the power was back on, a crisis was boiling. Though the power came back on, the equipment at the water department did not. Some of the machinery had been damaged, keeping the city from being able to pump treated water into the system. The city issued a boil advisory. What I learned is that the difference between a boil advisory and a boil order is the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning: the advisory means it isn't here yet, but be careful because it might get there.
The power had come back on around 4 p.m., the rest of the evening is a blur of writing, going through photos and designing pages until the time we got the paper "out," or sent to our printers around 10 p.m.. I know I had been trying to contact Adam Couch, Odessa's mayor, most of the day. I went back to my car and got inside just as he pulled up beside me. I groaned, cut the power and barely spoke as I gestured for him to come join me back in the office. This was before I took over Granny's office but after the power had permanently gone out in my own office, so we sat at the conference table. It was half reporting, half therapy session. The biggest concern was the water, and how close the city was coming to running out. Adam's a firefighter, so he was particularly worried with what would happen if there was a fire. I got home probably somewhere between 11 and midnight. It had been a long, difficult Tuesday, but not my longest.
Nici, Adam, and Congressman Cleaver. Adam later told me that none of us should have been worried about our appearance after a day of water conservation, because he "looked like a traffic cone" (he's a firefighter EMT)
I've designed the Front and Second front pages of The Odessan for a few years now, but I had to leave the front to my dad the next day, as I had to hurry over to City Hall, where Congressman Cleaver was meeting with city officials. He offered to contact Kansas City about trucking water to the city, but Nici Wilson, our city administrator, had some better news to share: the city believed an emergency fix for the water system would be in place that day. Congressman Cleaver shared some information on why he believed (correctly, it turned out) that the storm would not end up qualifying for FEMA assistance due to requirements that it cause so much damage to uninsured property. Then we went to the water department to see some of the damage.
Congressman Cleaver talks to Darrin Lamb, water superintendent, inside the water plant.
The day went on like that, with an emergency meeting of the Board of Aldermen later in the afternoon to declare a state of emergency in the city. Finally, sometime late in the afternoon, I got to go home and do what I do on a typical Wednesday afternoon: sleep. It was only Wednesday, but it felt like a different lifetime than the weekend before. But it wasn't quite over.
Thursday I got to hold my crazy Tuesday in my hands: both of our newspapers finished and printed. But that afternoon I got a strange call.
"We definitely had a tornado out here in Mayview," a man told me. "Come out and see."
Getting the Focus on Oak Grove out by our Tuesday night deadline was no small accomplishment.
The official maps had been a mess to start out with: despite contrary opinions and a definite line of damage in Odessa, the storm had initially been classified as straightline winds in town. But we had assumed, incorrectly, that we were the last of the damage. I got in my car and drove to the eastern edge of our coverage area, rural Mayview, 10 miles from Odessa and 20 from where the storm started in Oak Grove. Sure enough, the man was correct: they definitely had a tornado.
Two facing properties were damaged at odd angles, not as though wind had come in at one direction. A path of damage was visible up the hill to another local farm, with metal cleared from the road and placed in piles. Several buildings on both of the facing properties had fallen, and curtains were sucked out of a closed window on one of the houses. I wondered why I hadn't heard anything about the storm in Mayview, and asked the man if he had contacted the National Weather Service.
"Why, do you think I should?"
"Well, it'll probably help with your insurance."
Well, he did, and the storm in Mayview was classified as an EF-1. Odessa's storm was also reclassified, an EF-1 coming up the hill toward the utility plants and then an EF-0 coming down the other side. Comparing it with accounts of damages to churches, it appears to be the same path that a tornado took through town in the late 1800s, and one of the streets in Odessa hardest hit was also heavily impacted by the 2014 storm.
Obviously, we had a lot of fallout to cover as our entire coverage area tried to recover from all this damage. But that's where Ruth Ann comes in. She was set to start with us as a reporter for the Focus in the back half of the week, and instead of running for the hills as fast as she could, she immediately dug in and has done a wonderful job covering Oak Grove's recovery. She also rolled up her sleeves and signed up to serve on committees herself, and I know the Oak Grove community is grateful. In Odessa I also had some recent help, as our newest employee, Jordan Wright, wrote a really nice piece about restoration to the stained glass windows at the Methodist Church that were damaged in the storm.
Everytime someone in Oak Grove mentions the tornado, they mention how lucky we all were: any small detail off and it could have been much, much worse (it was only 10 miles per hour less than an EF-4 classification, after all). Well, I'm lucky were able to hold it all together and get our papers out, and continue to cover what became, in just a few minutes on a Monday night, the biggest story of 2017. As we reenter tornado season, listen to me: when the sirens go off, go to the basement.