Slideshow: A town rebuilds, but is never the same, after tornado

Barry Gutierrez / for NBC News

Limon librarian Lucille Reimer holds a historical photograph of the town bank destroyed by a 1990 tornado. The building was reborn as a library. See images of the town then and now.

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One generation after a 206-mph tornado pulverized and vacuumed away most of the historic downtown and damaged one-third of the homes in Limon, Colo., librarian Lucille Reimer has a small hitch in her voice when she describes the initial dawn after the storm, the first day of revival.

“The most amazing site. The sun was coming up. People were just starting to move around. And I saw them — hundreds of police cars, all coming in to help,” recalled Reimer, who was a reporter for the local newspaper, The Limon Leader, when a June 6, 1990 twister nearly scraped away the little village of about 2,000 people in eastern Colorado, injuring 17 people, displacing hundreds, yet killing none. "Seeing all those flashing lights arriving, well, it still gives me shivers." 

Over the past 23 years, Limon has reinvented its look, retained much of its population and reclaimed its status as a stout plains anchor where stranded travelers find friendly shelter when white-out blizzards close the nearby interstate highway. The town has returned to its reputation as a plucky refuge after enduring a short spell as a place in desperate need of extra hands.   

The same ragged roadmap — reconstruction and resurrection — has been followed repeatedly in towns slashed or decimated by house-chewing tornadoes. They’re still rebuilding in Joplin, Mo., where on Wednesday residents paused in silence to mark the second anniversary of the twister that claimed 161 people. And they’re mourning again in Moore, Okla., which lost 36 people in a 1999 twister and where searchers this week combed the carnage from Monday’s tornado that took another 24 lives. 

Looking back, some parallels can be seen when comparing the early renaissance of Limon and the ongoing recovery in Joplin. One year after the catastrophic storm struck Joplin, officials there had erected a new hospital to replace a destroyed medical center. Thirteen months after the Limon tornado, workers had built a new town hall and a new fire station. 

But there are difficult contrasts as well. Joplin received $1 billion in federal aid to help reassemble. Limon — which sustained $25 million in damage — did not receive a similar federal disaster designation despite its near destruction. Why?

"Nobody got killed," said Joe Kiely, Limon's assistant town manager. After the storm, he drove to Limon from his home in Fort Morgan, Colo., 80 miles to the north, to volunteer in the cleanup for one weekend. He stayed for three weeks and later was offered the job of Limon's recovery director. "We used primarily state money, insurance dollars, and donations from the public." 

The big rebuild
More than two decades later, much of Limon barely resembles its pre-storm form. Small trees, planted along the downtown sidewalks during the early 1990s, now are fully mature and starting to leaf out for summer. Limon’s new town hall was constructed with a modern flair. In all, some 350 building permits were pulled there in the months after the big winds. 

Barry Gutierrez / for NBC News

Joe Kiely, 60, stands in front of the new town hall that replaced the old one destroyed in the 1990 tornado in Limon, Colo.

At his town hall office, Limon town manager Dave Stone scans an old photo of the four-block downtown sector taken before the twister. He counts nine buildings that today are gone, including a bank, two restaurants, the local newspaper's former office, a corner gas station, a vintage hotel, the fire station — and the old town hall.

"The downtown area is drastically different," said Stone, who grew up there. Leaving after the tornado, he adds, "never crossed my mind." 

"I wanted to make sure that town did sustain itself," Stone said. "I don’t know that anybody picked up and left town. Essentially, they stayed here and worked together to reconstruct the community." 

Like any town, Limon has had its comings and goings, its births and deaths during in the past 23 years. But U.S. Census figures back Stone's point: In 1990, there were 1,831 residents; in 2010 there were 1,880. 

While memories of an eerie aftermath remain thick for many folks — the brick rubble, the contorted metal sheets sheered from dozens of mobile homes, the odd chill that filled the darkness after the super cell passed — it is the warmth of what followed that locals prefer to recount.

The launch of the big rebuild seemed to be signaled by that incoming parade of squad cars witnessed by Lucille Reimer. They came from Colorado cities and little burgs to the west, south and east. They followed the twister’s precise path, right down Main Street, where many of the town's businesses, about 80 percent of the local commerce, were ruined or heavily impacted.

'Not one homeless person'
With security re-established by visiting cops, food became the next necessity. The twister hit just after 8 p.m. on a Wednesday. Normally, trucks pulled in on Thursdays to replenish the local grocery’s shelves. A grocery store in the neighboring town of Hugo, Colo., offered to let those same rigs offload their perishables in its backrooms there so that Limon’s hungry residents could drive over to restock their pantries.

But restoring city services — including hooking up utilities and finding temporary headquarters for the police department, ambulance service, government offices and the post office — quickly became priority number one. Simultaneously, anyone with a spare bedroom took in some of the hundreds of people who had lost their homes. In all, 228 of Limon's 750 dwellings were damaged. 

“On Monday morning, when FEMA came to town, there was not one single homeless person,” Reimer said. “Because people took care of their own.”

Some merchants had extra, empty commercial space located away from the ravaged town core, and they offered their storefronts or unused locales to friends and colleagues whose businesses had been blown away, Reimer said. 

Soon, the Army National Guard thundered in to knock down rickety buildings then shovel up and haul away the massive stacks of debris. Before winter 1990, Limon was free of loose bricks, splinters and metal shards.   

'All kinds of progress'
Compare that to Joplin, Mo., where the 2011 tornado took out 553 businesses in a town of about 50,000 people. One year after that storm, 446 of those businesses had re-opened. Today, road signs ripped from the ground have been replaced. Three new schools are being constructed.

"We've made all kinds of progress, just phenomenal progress. I've never seen anything move so fast in my life: new buildings where the old buildings used to be, and businesses, homes, apartments where the old ones all used to be," said Aaron Miller, who owns Midwest Storm Shelters, a local company that constructs residential tornado shelters and safe rooms. His crew has installed at least 600 such units in Joplin since the devastating storm. 

"But there's still empty lots. Being a lifetime resident, I can say it's not the same. It doesn't look the same. Besides the buildings being different, the trees are gone. Joplin was just beautiful for its big trees (before 2011). Now, you might pull up to what used to be a nice shady intersection that had trees growing over the road, and there's just a street light there."

Joe Raedle / Getty Images file

The top photo of this composite image shows family members salvaging what they can from a home after it was destroyed when a massive tornado struck on May 22, 2011, in Joplin, Mo. The bottom photo was taken one year after the tornado, and shows the destroyed buildings and rubble have been removed and new homes have been built.

Unlike Limon, Joplin sustained mass casualties. And those missing friends and family members cast a personal shadow over Joplin that may take generations to fade, that no physical rebuilding boom can begin to pave over or replace. 

"We've put storm shelters in for people who have lost family members. We'll put a storm shelter in, now and then, for somebody that has lifetime scars, where you can tell they were in the tornado — scars on their arms, their legs, even their face. They'll tell you: We were in the tornado," Miller said. "We've had a catastrophic loss of life." 

'A new sense of pride'
Limon’s full re-emergence took about five years, estimates Reimer, now the head librarian and treasurer of the chamber of commerce. 

Local contractors who for years had doggedly competed, trying to outbid and out-hustle each other for jobs, began working side by side to ensure the fastest possible restoration, including resurrecting Limon's grocery store. The overriding spirit on the ground, Reimer said, was marked by "looking out for one another." 

“It all just gave our community a new sense of pride to kind of change an old town to a new look, a perk up,” she said. "Small towns just take care of themselves like that. But we also had a lot of generous help.

“Limon always had a reputation of being there when people needed us — whenever they closed the highway (Interstate 70) during the blizzards, when the wind is blowing and people have nowhere else to go. So people here just take them in. It’s what we do," she said. "But after the tornado, they came in and they took care of us.”

Related:

Full coverage of the Oklahoma tornado tragedy on NBCNews.com

While Oklahoma staggers, Joplin marks 2 years after its own tornado

Charlie Riedel / AP

A man salvages a guitar from a severely damaged home in Joplin, Mo., on May 23, 2011.

While Oklahoma begins to clean up after a ferocious tornado, the site of one of the worst twisters in American history — Joplin, Mo., a little more than 200 miles away — marked a solemn anniversary Wednesday.

On May 22, 2011, a tornado all but wiped Joplin off the map. The twister killed 161 people, injured more than 1,000 and wrought almost $3 billion worth of damage. It was clocked at more than 200 mph.

But the town has come back even stronger with changes to their infrastructure that are helping people stay safe. Now, nearly 80 percent of new homes include a safe room, and a new hospital will open in 2015 with windows able to withstand 250 mph winds.

“Devastation is a short walk, but determination lasts all the time,” Mayor Melodee Colbert Kean said. “Joplin is a city of hope. We know what it’s like to suffer… but know what it's like to get back up.”

Ninety percent of affected businesses are now open and 75 percent of the homes have been rebuilt.

And Mercy Hospital, once the symbol of the tornado's fury, was running again in just eight months.

A new facility will open in 2015 with walls and windows built to withstand 250 mph winds and its electrical systems securely buried under ground.

A moment of silence was held at 5:41 p.m. local time, the moment the tornado struck two years ago. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who earlier in the day was in Moore, Okla., to pledge federal help, attended the commemoration.

Joplin sent a support team to Moore to help with the recovery. The cities each have about 50,000 people.

The Joplin tornado damaged or destroyed 7,500 homes. On the Senate floor Wednesday, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said there were lessons for Moore in the rebuilding.

“For the people in Joplin, they immediately began to think about Joplin tomorrow instead of Joplin yesterday,” he said. “And two years later, it’s still a community that’s dealing with loss, but a community that’s building new schools and new businesses.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency provided housing for 586 households after the Joplin tornado, and all but 12 have moved into longer-term or permanent homes, the city says.

NBC News' Becky Bratu contributed to this report.

Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Tannen Maury / EPA

A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving at least 24 dead.

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This story was originally published on Wed May 22, 2013 7:22 PM EDT

Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Destroyed vehicles lie in the rubble outside the Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Okla., on Tuesday.

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As evening drew to a close in Oklahoma, after a day of tireless searching for survivors among the debris left behind by a powerful tornado, officials said the operation could end by nightfall Tuesday.

"We will be through every damaged piece of property in this city at least three times before we're done and we hope to be done by dark tonight," Moore Fire Chief Gary Bird said at a news conference.

Emergency crews and National Guard troops picked through neighborhoods without recognizable streets in a grim, house-by-house search of the blasted-out husk of a city left behind by the ferocious tornado.

Authorities lowered the death toll to 24, less than half the figure they gave in the initial chaos after the twister, but there was still no full accounting of those missing. Nine of the confirmed dead were children, including seven in a flattened elementary school.

Four bodies were recovered, including a 3-month-old baby, at a local 7-Eleven.

Working with search dogs and under menacing skies, the crews meticulously combed the rubble in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, which took a direct hit when the tornado cut a 17-mile path of destruction on Monday afternoon.

Dozens of people were pulled from the wreckage in the initial hours after the storm, but there were no reports of additional survivors found Tuesday — only scraps of wood, shreds of clothing, shards of glass and metal and cars crumpled into each other and into buildings. Entire stretches of Moore looked as if they had been put through a blender.

“I mean, there’s nothing,” said Robert Foster, whose family home was destroyed. “People are walking up and down the streets. It’s really upsetting to look at. We grew up there. That’s our whole childhood. And it’s all flattened now.”

Gov. Mary Fallin said there were 237 injured, but authorities cautioned that figure and the death toll could still rise. Even with the benefit of a full day’s light, people were only beginning to grasp the scope of the destruction in Moore and parts of Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma University Medical Center admitted 59 children and 34 adults.

The National Weather Service said survey crews had found at least one area of Category EF5 damage — the highest classification for tornadoes, meaning winds had exceeded 200 mph.

Frank Keating, a former Oklahoma governor, said on MSNBC that as many as 20,000 families could be displaced.

“This was the storm of storms,” Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett said.

The first of the victims was publicly identified — Ja’Nae Hornsby, a third-grader who was killed when the tornado demolished Plaza Towers Elementary School. She was remembered by her family Tuesday as full of joy and fond of playing dress-up. Her relatives gathered at a Baptist church in Oklahoma City to console each other.

A second victim, Hemant Bhonde, 65, became separated from his wife when the tornado struck their home, his family told NBC News. Bhonde's body was recovered Tuesday, hospital officials said. His wife survived.

Tannen Maury / EPA

Firefighters examine the rubble of a home in a destroyed neighborhood in Moore.

As they took the measure of what they had lost, people in Moore also marveled that they were alive, and began to share stories of survival and of how they protected each other when the twister struck, announcing itself with roaring wind.

Children from Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children were reported drowned in a pool of water, told of hearing sirens and running into a hall for cover, some still carrying their math books.

A teacher, Rhonda Crosswhite, said she huddled with students in a bathroom stall and draped herself over them for cover as the storm hit.

“One of my little boys, he just kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me, please don’t die with me,’” she told TODAY. “But we’re OK. And we made it out, and it finally stopped.”

She said all her students were accounted for.

Damian Britton, a fourth-grader, credited “Miss Crosswhite” with saving his life. He estimated it took about five minutes for the twister to pass through before the students emerged from cover to survey the damage and check on their classmates.

“It was just a disaster,’’ he said. “There was just a bunch of stuff thrown around and the cars were tipped over, and it smelled like gas.”

At an afternoon news conference, Bird said that search dogs were no longer “making any hits” at the school. He said no one had been found there Tuesday but cautioned that the search was still active.

“They will not declare that structure clear until they are down to the ground and have been through every piece of rubble in that building,” he said.

One child was killed at Briarwood Elementary School, elsewhere in Moore, said police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis. There was no word on how the ninth child died. Besides the 19 deaths in Moore, five were killed in southern neighborhoods of Oklahoma City.

Charlie Riedel / AP

Zac Woodcock salvages items from the rubble of a tornado-ravaged rental home in Moore.

Authorities said they hoped to have every home, business and car in Moore searched by nightfall. They worked under the threat of still more severe weather. Forecasters said parts of Oklahoma and Texas, including Dallas, were at risk for more tornadoes.

The tornado Monday spent 40 minutes on the ground, said Rick Smith of the National Weather Service.

“We’ve seen numerous structures that are wiped clean to the foundation,” he said.

Smith said that the first severe thunderstorm warning had gone out 44 minutes before the tornado touched down, and the first tornado warning 16 minutes ahead. The weather service said the storm, at its widest, stretched 1.3 miles.

President Barack Obama called it “one of the most destructive tornadoes in history.” Speaking from the White House, he pledged the full help of the federal government and said there was no time to waste.

“In an instant, neighborhoods were destroyed, dozens of people lost their lives, many more were injured, and among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew, their school,” he said. “So our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today.”

Fallin, after a helicopter tour that traced the tornado’s path, said searchers were having trouble because “the streets are just gone. The signs are just gone.”

Expressions of grief and support came from across the world. Pope Francis said on Twitter: “I am close to the families of all who died in the Oklahoma tornado, especially those who lost young children. Join me in praying for them.”

Queen Elizabeth II extended her deepest sympathies, and House Speaker John Boehner ordered flags at the Capitol to half-staff.

Relief efforts sprang up. The NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder and its star player, Kevin Durant, each pledged $1 million. Others helped as they could: Miles from Moore, people went on Facebook to post family photos that had landed in their yards, hoping to match them with their owners.

Aerial pictures of the destruction brought to mind Joplin, the Missouri town virtually wiped off the map two years ago when an EF5 tornado killed 158 people and caused $2.8 billion in damage.

The twister cut a path similar to a tornado outbreak that ravaged Oklahoma and Kansas on May 3, 1999, killing 46 people and damaging or destroying more than 8,000 homes. Wind in that outbreak was clocked at 318 mph, the fastest ever recorded on earth.

Officials in Moore complained earlier this year about foot-dragging by the federal government over $2 million in federal grants for “safe rooms” in 800 homes to protect them from severe weather.

A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency told NBC News the agency was looking into the claim.

The city’s website also said, however, that Moore faced only a 1 to 2 percent chance of a tornado on any spring day, and that if a tornado did strike, there was less than a 1 percent chance that it would be as strong as the 1999 tornado.

Monday’s storm beat those odds. Alfredo Corrales and Viviana Lune rode it out in a shelter beneath their house. Corrales told TODAY that they had hunkered down there and heard voices above, and popped open the door to find several neighbors asking to come in.

The wind was so strong, Corrales said, that he and a neighbor had to hold the cellar door shut. When they emerged, they found a rewritten landscape.

“I saw basically nothing,” Luna said. “There were no fences there anymore, trees were snapped in half, roofs of houses were gone. Everything from people’s houses and even from neighborhoods across the street was laying in our yards. Half of the roof is torn off, the garage is caved in — it's just a total mess.”

More on the Oklahoma tornado:

How to help Oklahoma tornado victims

Tornado survivors: A 48-hour window of opportunity

‘The school started coming apart’: Trapped students had nowhere to hide

‘Bless you for posting’: Facebook group reunites tornado victims with photos, documents

Curse or coincidence? Scientists study Tornado Alley's past and future

NBC News' Jeff Black, Tracy Connor, Becky Bratu and Kristen Welker contributed to this report, as did NBC News contributor Alex Hannaford and The Associated Press.

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 8:55 PM EDT

 By Kevin Tibbles
      NBC News

When the awful funnel cloud tore through Joplin, Mo., it stole the lives of 160 people, ripped apart some 8,000 homes and businesses and left eight Joplin schools in ruins.

And yet from day one, when people were still in shock over what had befallen their small city, they were determined to open the schools on time. Getting the kids back to school meant ensuring Joplin would survive. On Wednesday, those schools opened.

"There's not a book out there on how to deal with an F-5 tornado and how to get your school started again," says Bud Sexon, a local middle school principal.

Joplin's one high school was ripped apart from top to bottom. Security camera video from inside the school shows it all happening. So it wasn't as if the kids were going to be attending classes there; something creative had to be done -- and done fast.

Joplin's 'new' high school is located in an empty big box store at one of the local shopping malls. Yes, it is just across the way from Macy's and down from Sears. But this vacant space was transformed in just a few weeks into a modern place of learning. There are brand new classrooms and a cafeteria; and today the sound of a thousand bustling juniors and seniors echoed inside. The facility even has its own coffee bar and media center with an in-house television station.

"Everybody is just so proud to be part of the Joplin schools and a part of this community," says school Superintendent Dr. C.J. Huff.

".. and I think it just has to do with the fact that we've shown the rest of the world what can be done when people work together and do the right things for kids no matter what, you put the politics aside, you put the personal agendas aside, and you do what's right...We did that, and we showed the rest of the world we could. "

There have been well wishes and donations from around the globe. This morning each and every student in the high school received a new lap top computer, a gift from the United Arab Emirates.

A few blocks away, the younger kids are also heading back to class. The Irving Elementary School was also destroyed by the twister, so its students are now attending class in a school that had been mothballed. That building is now filled with laughter and life.

For local mother Shanna Helm, it is vital the kids get back to class. "If it wasn't for them to go to school, I think more of the 'scared' would be there. I think they would be scared, as if normal life wasn't able to continue and they would be scared. It already has changed so much that one more thing to be different, I don't think they could handle it."

Many of the kids returning to school come from families that have lost everything. So aside from pencils and papers, they received new sneakers and clothing. This too has all been donated.

I asked one 10-year-old boy about what had changed in his life over the summer. "Where are you living?" I asked. "At the Motel 6" was his reply.

So when school opened Wednesday, it marked an important milestone in a community still healing. Toward that end, every single  kid walking through the doors of the 'new' Irving Elementary not only got the chance for a little normal in their lives, they also got a big hug.

When classes begin in Joplin, Mo., on Wednesday, just 87 days after a tornado ripped through the city, about 900 students will take their seats in an unusual learning environment — a shopping mall.

"But this will be no ordinary mall," promises Jim Dunn, a spokesman for Joplin School District.

Joplin officials say they hope the learning center, created for 11^th- and 12^th-graders inside a vacant 90,000-square-foot department store using donations and federal relief funds, will establish Joplin as a hub of innovation, not as a district crushed by disaster. 

Click here to see a slideshow of Joplin: Before and after cleanup

There are no lockers or books at the high school, which students have dubbed "The Mall" though it is in a separate building from the stores.

"The design is what we call a flexible floor plan, with areas that are wide open for large group instruction and smaller settings that can accommodate a classroom and study areas," Dunn said. "It's a high-tech environment with large screens and computers everywhere. And Joplin's mascot, the eagle, will be prominent." 

Mike Stone / Reuters

A view of the destruction at Joplin High School after the killer tornado struck the town on May 23.

The May 22 tornado that swept through Joplin killed 160 people, including seven students and one teacher, and destroyed about 30 percent the homes and businesses in the a city of about 50,000 residents. The deadliest tornado in the United States in more than 60 years also devoured 10 schools, including the only public high school, Joplin High. In all, the district estimated the damage at about $150 million, more than $50 million of that being needed to rebuild Joplin High School, Dunn said.

The campaign is off to a strong start, with donors and volunteers from around the world pitching in:

• The oil-rich United Arab Emirates vowed up to $1 million to make sure each Joplin student had a laptop this year. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, the UAE donated $100 million to U.S. relief efforts.
• Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow donated her 1959 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL Roadster to raise money to benefit the Joplin Schools Recovery Fund. Estimate of the car's value was at $50,000 to $80,000.
• Nearly 30,000 volunteers, working 140,000 hours, have jump-started the rebuilding effort. Several Kansas towns supplied hundreds of desks and chairs; a Des Moines, Ill., church donated school supplies.
• One resident, Mark Kinsley, enlisted his buddies and launched Rebuildjoplin.org, an online site that provides users with a list of resources for those seeking help.

District officials estimated about 5,000 students out of 7,000 were displaced from their homes. The district expects about 90 percent of the children to return to school this year, Dunn said.

When they do, each student will receive a new backpack and school supplies on the first day of school.

Jim Seida / msnbc.com

"All we did in the old school was sit in the hallways, which would have been a bad thing because we'd all be gone," says senior Chloe Hadley, who stands in front of tornado shelters in the mall's parking lot.

Chloe Hadley, 17, said she is ready to start her senior year, despite the heartache and loss from that terrible night in May.

Hadley said the tornado struck on an evening when her friends and others from the 445-student graduating class were celebrating their commencement.

The tornado's 200-mph winds were so severe that it hurled a church steeple across the road and into the main entrance of the high school. One of her best friends, Will Norton, was killed as he was driving home, thrown from his Hummer H3 when it flipped several times.

"It's been devastating," said Hadley, who is senior class president. "Not only had we had to live with that, but I have had to drive through the ruins and despair every day. You can't get away from it. It is everywhere."

"It will be good to go back, because it will keep us busy and keep our thoughts off of what really happened here," said Hadley. "I'm looking forward to it, even if it is in the mall."

Related link:
Photoblog: Tornado 'helps' Joplin resident downsize home