The deadly May 16 tornado caused widespread devastation across north St. Louis, displacing many longtime residents. A year later, much of the damage remains, and many on the north side are without adequate resources to rebuild.
St. Louis Public Radio reporters interviewed more than 60 north St. Louis residents who are still living with the impacts of the tornado. Most of the residents interviewed are living in dramatically different circumstances. Some are facing temporary challenges, and others are left to deal with permanent, irreparable damage to their homes.
Many of those stories informed the reporting in "Torn," STLPR's series that investigates and documents the aftermath of the tornado. Some of those experiences that didn't find a home elsewhere stuck out as examples of the devastating impacts of the tornado and the long road to recovery.
Here are three of those stories.
Leaving the neighborhood behind
The storm tore off Dolly Baskin and Cornell Jeffery's roof and the entire back side of their house in the O'Fallon neighborhood on May 16 of last year. It took many of her belongings and tossed about the rest. The damage was so extensive that Baskin's insurance company dropped her property from the policy going forward.
"When I came in and I seen everything was open, I just fell to my knees and started crying," Baskin said. "I made a joke about how we got a built-in sunroof, you know, to keep from really losing my mind."
Baskin said the neighborhood, where she and housemate, Jeffery, grew up, was lively before the storm. She said the two were friendly enough with the neighbors that people would stop by when the pair played music through a speaker on their lawn. Baskin said that sense of community made it hard to leave.
But after the tornado rendered their home unlivable, Baskin and Jeffery did leave.
"The first thing I thought about was leaving the neighbors," Baskin said. "That was our first house. That's going to be embedded in us until the day we die."
Right after the storm, the pair's insurance company set them up in a hotel, where they stayed for a month. But after someone broke into Baskin's truck, they moved in with her son until they could find a permanent place to live. During that time, someone broke in through the hole in the back of their old house and stole their pipes and some other belongings.
Baskin and Jeffery settled into a new home in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood in August. Baskin said having the house is a blessing but that the toll and trauma of the tornado remain.
"I think [people] just physically moved on because they had to," Baskin said. "But that's something you'll never get over. Never."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, local and state governments are all putting money in for tornado recovery. But Jeffery said the funds alone won't be enough to bring back what was lost.
"They can come down here and drop a helicopter full of money, but you've got to give people something to live for again," he said. "I don't think enough money can bring that back."
Another fresh start
When the May 16 tornado hit, Mark McElveen said it felt like a flashback.
McElveen moved to St. Louis from New Orleans five years ago seeking a fresh start. He also felt fed up with the slow-moving New Orleans government after watching multiple hurricanes devastate the region.
McElveen said that, much like with New Orleans, he loves the culture of St. Louis but resents what he considers to be an absentee government.
"I love St. Louis, but as humans, we don't love each other," he said. "A lot of us are being ignored by people that we put in office to represent us. If you're not amongst us, you're not for us."
When Hurricane Katrina hit, more than 1,300 people died, and tens of thousands more like McElveen were displaced. He said the hurricane left vulnerable people in his community without the resources to rebuild properly.
After the hurricane, the federal government found that a large share of the destruction was preventable due to weaknesses in critical levees managed by the federal government. Local, state and federal government infamously struggled to support residents in the city's historically disenfranchised neighborhoods, which were hit hardest by the flooding and were the least equipped to recover.
The numbers of those killed or displaced by the May 16 tornado are much smaller than those for Hurricane Katrina. But for those residents who remain uprooted after the tornado, dissatisfaction with slow-moving government recovery efforts is growing.
McElveen and his mother had been unhoused three separate times before the hurricane hit. When Hurricane Katrina came, McElveen said the lack of timely response from government officials made him and his community feel helpless.
When the tornado hit St. Louis, McElveen said he felt like he was reliving the same disaster — and the same government response.
"My life was ripped out from underneath me again," McElveen said. "It's like this disaster was saying, 'I'm not done with you.'"
The tornado severely damaged the roof of McElveen's home and caused the ceilings to collapse in some places. The family spent $20,000 from their child's college fund to replace the roof, but it's already sagging in some places due to other structural damage and will need to be replaced again.
"It reminded me of after the water receded in New Orleans," McElveen said. "You can rebuild, but … it'll never be the same. And that's what I really think a lot of people have to understand."
McElveen said he received $2,000 from FEMA and no assistance from St. Louis after the storm damaged his home. He said that he's making do but that the money he got from insurance is insufficient to cover the costs to rebuild his life.
"We pay the city money out of our check at the end of the year, but I don't have no record of where my dollar went," McElveen said. "Am I allowed to even have a receipt?"
McElveen and his wife are staying in an apartment indefinitely until they can afford the repairs in the tornado-damaged home.
Living with the reminders
The old, towering trees lining Waterman Boulevard were Kelly Wichmann's favorite part of living in the Skinker DeBaliviere neighborhood. When she visited her home nearly a year after the tornado, most were gone.
"We still have to live with all the reminders," Wichmann said. "Even when I do get to move back in, there's going to be those scars left."
The tornado hit a day short of a year after Wichmann and her fiancee moved into the top-floor condo of the now-battered building. Large patches of the condo's roof collapsed during the tornado, and the rain that came a few days later destroyed much of the furniture in their living room and caused extensive damage in the kitchen.
In the immediate aftermath of the tornado, volunteers with the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency determined the building was unsafe for occupancy. The last time Wichmann visited the property over the summer, contractors were stripping it to the studs.
The couple now lives in an apartment down the street while they wait for repairs. Wichmann estimates that it will take 12 to 14 months to get back into their home.
"Very soon, I will have been displaced from my unit longer than I lived in it," Wichmann said.
In the meantime, they are using insurance stipends for furniture and "loss of use" rent reimbursement to make rent at their current apartment while paying their existing mortgage and homeowners association fees. That money is drying up, Wichmann said, because it was paid as a one-time fee after the tornado.
Wichmann is reapplying for assistance through FEMA, which denied her first application, citing a lack of evidence that their insurance coverage was insufficient.
"It's just such a mental load," Wichmann said. "I've just been waiting this whole time, and now I [have to] start this process basically all over again."
As one of the few owner-occupants in the cluster of buildings in her condo's homeowners association, Wichmann is one of the only tenants eligible to vote on reconstruction decisions. She said the tornado caused a reckoning about the association's dysfunctional bylaws and has led to a complete overhaul of the organization.
But making those decisions requires a quorum of homeowners to appear in person, which she said is tricky when landlords live in different states and countries.
"It's always been this slight pushing of the deadline," Wichmann said. "Originally, we were told January was when they were hoping to start reconstruction. Obviously, that didn't happen."
Wichmann now serves as a member of the newly elected board and will spend the coming weeks rewriting the organization's bylaws. Structural repairs under the new administration started Monday.
She said working to recover from the tornado has brought her closer to her neighbors.
"This entire process has made me love the neighborhood more and shown me the resilience and the passion that the people do have," Wichmann said. "I've connected more with my neighbors because of this process than I would have regarded otherwise."
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