Fourteen years ago, on May 22, 2011, an E-5 tornado ripped through the middle of Joplin, Missouri claiming the lives of 158 people. KRPS's Rachel Schnelle spoke with one resident about how the day impacted his career and personal life.
SCHNELLE: Describe your experience in 2011 with the tornado.
MICHAEL WEAVER: It was a day that felt normal to begin with. I had just finished my first year of college. I was trying to find a job for the summer, had been applying around and looking particularly at some positions that were at Mercy at the time with their phlebotomy lab. I remember hearing that the weather was supposed to turn bad. I was kind of standing outside. And all of a sudden I felt this chill of the wind like you would feel when there's a major storm front moving in, and it really hit at that point, oh this will probably be something serious so we got everyone at the house that we were living with together at the time down into the basement and just kind of sat around and waited. I remember my mom called to make sure that we were all in the basement and everyone was safe, and I assured her that we were and then, while I was on the phone, power went out. But I remember we were sitting down in the basement. It was completely dark, and all of a sudden, my eardrums started popping, like the pressure's changing, and we heard the windows in the upstairs on the second floor just start to shatter, and it was just a sound of pure chaos and it — but eventually we made our way upstairs, and the second floor was fine, but all the windows were crashed in. There was glass everywhere. We started walking around the neighborhood, kind of wandered out towards 20th Street where we knew more of the damage was. And I remember getting there and looking down the road and realizing I can see St. John's Hospital. I was at around 20th and Duquesne, like I shouldn't be able to see that.
I remember walking around at that point. I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I just realized at that moment that, even though I'd taken first aid courses, CPR courses, all that stuff, and I thought I knew something, I realized in that moment there was almost nothing that I actually knew how to do. For me, it was a wakeup call of, there's a reason that you have to go through so much training to do this. It really helped to push me to become a better doctor and to really shoot for getting into medical school, and it was really special to me then when I got to be one of the first class of Kansas City University in Joplin, which was built in the temporary Mercy that was put up by the Army Corps of Engineers just after the tornado and really seeing not only in 2011 how the city of Joplin came together to rebuild, but being in that building showed me that the city of Joplin came together because they had a common goal to make our community better.
SCHNELLE: How else has the disaster impacted your life as a person in the medical field and just in your personal life?
WEAVER: For several years after the tornado, every time a storm came around, I was always a lot more scared than I had been before. I don't know if I would necessarily have reached the actual diagnosis of PTSD, but it gives me a lot more appreciation for the people that go through trauma of any kind. I know that was certainly a trauma for me. And through the years, talking to other people that have been through the tornado and learning about the things that they've gone through in their lives and how they've overcome it, it's always amazing to me.
SCHNELLE: What has this experience taught you about being a resident in Joplin?
WEAVER: You know, growing up, I would always tell people, yeah, I'm from Joplin, and it was just where I was born. It didn't really mean all that much more to me. But after the tornado, seeing the community come together and realizing I'm a part of Joplin, it's not I was just born here, it's that I get to be a part of what we're doing here and the changes that we can make, and being able to see Joplin improve year after year, I'm really proud to be a resident here, and I'm really proud to be a doctor here. Joplin is full of hard working and caring people, and I think it's really important for all of us to remember that we're all neighbors, and we need to take care of each other.
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