3 Priorities that Helped Rebuild Joplin, Mo.’s Schools

Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr was at home the evening the EF5 tornado tore through the heart of Joplin. “I got a phone call from the fire chief,” said Rohr. “He said, ‘You better come now.’” Not realizing the extent of the damage, Rohr headed into the city expecting to rally a few local officials to perform storm assessments. “The closer we got to the city, the worse it was,” he said. “We saw the vocational school was gone, and the high school was almost completely gone. We had a lady run up and ask us to help some people that were trapped in a church.”

Read about how Joplin used the devastating tornado to rebuild with new-age schools.

After assisting with several critical situations, Rohr went to work with other officials to organize Joplin’s response. That evening, they took a helicopter ride over the city to assess the damage using night vision goggles. What they saw was devastating. “One-third of the city was gone,” Rohr said. “When we got back, I worked with city staff all night long to organize what we needed to do.”

The immediate response from a school perspective centered on three priorities:

• Account for all students and staff. Social media played a huge part, as cellphones weren’t usable.
• Get an assessment of damage to facilities, and determine what facilities might be usable again.
• Secure valuables that could be salvaged safely, from medications in nurses’ cabinets to technology to student records.

Rohr and other city officials worked incessantly from that point forward doing whatever needed to be done to repair the damages. Joplin received an outpouring of support from federal, state and other agencies. “One challenge we had was so many people that came here to help didn’t know the city,” Rohr said. “We tried to match each of them up with a city employee who knew the city inside and out. However, we still ran into challenges because even the lifelong residents didn’t recognize parts of the city. In some cases, there was so much damage there was no way to get their bearings.”

City officials were also amazed by the number of people who came forward to volunteer. In all, the city had 175,000 registered volunteers. “We weren’t prepared for the outpouring of support that came our way, and managing the donations and volunteers,” Rohr said. “We needed to find something for everyone to do to contribute because we wanted to enable everyone to help.”

Rohr wrote a book, Joplin: The Miracle of the Human Spirit, following the ordeal. In the book, he recounts many of the events following the disaster and recommends how other cities might better prepare for the unexpected. “We got a lot of help, and we wanted to make sure we shared what we
learned with others,” Rohr said.


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