Emergency Communication Is Keyįour NIST researchers - three engineers and one social scientist - were on the ground in Missouri within two days of the tornado, but severe weather still lingered. The experts conducted their investigation of the Joplin tornado under the National Construction Safety Team Act (NCST), which grants NIST and its teams the authority to access disaster sites, subpoena evidence and take other actions. has the greatest number of tornadoes per year. And among all of the nations around the world, the U.S. Tornadoes in general are deadly phenomena, so much that since 1950 they have caused more deaths than hurricanes and earthquakes combined. And the $2.8 billion in damages made it the costliest.Īlthough the Joplin tornado was far from a run-of-the-mill event, it was one of several cataclysmic tornadoes in that spring alone.
since the National Weather Service (NWS) began official record-keeping in 1950. The high number of fatalities made it the deadliest single tornado in the U.S. Late in the afternoon, a tornado rated as the most intense on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, an EF5, cut a 6-mile-long (9.7-kilometer) gash through the densely populated Joplin metro area, home to more than 50,000 people.ĭespite the city’s track record of following the latest building codes and the dissemination of warnings beforehand, the tornado - with winds estimated at more than 200 miles (321 kilometers) per hour at times - killed 161, injured over 1,000 and wrecked more than 8,000 buildings, including a major hospital and other critical facilities. Thousands gathered for a high school graduation ceremony.īut as the atmosphere swirled above, catastrophe brewed. People attended church services and ate at restaurants with friends and family. “The inferences in this case are deeply stacked and rely on speculation rather than factual foundation such that the ultimate conclusion reached by (the) plaintiff ‘is too remote and has no logical foundation in fact,’” Harpool wrote.For many residents of Joplin, Missouri, May 22, 2011, started out like any other Sunday. In his 29-page ruling, Harpool wrote that he “finds (the) plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence to allow a reasonable fact-finder to conclude that Home Depot breached a duty that cause the decedents’ deaths.”
Housel’s Joplin attorneys did not return requests for comment, including on whether they planned to appeal.
“This was an (EF5) tornado, and we’re confident the construction of the building would not have helped in that terrible situation.” “The fact is we comply with all local codes, and we exceeded the local codes in this jurisdiction,” Holmes added. The twister - measured at the top of the rating scale where winds can reach more than 200 mph - flattened virtually everything in its path, damaging or destroying about 7,500 homes.Ī spokesman for Atlanta-based Home Depot, Stephen Holmes, said Friday that while the company welcomes Harpool’s ruling, “it doesn’t diminish our sadness and thoughts for all of the families that suffered losses through the terrible tornado.” history, carving a mile-wide scar through the southwestern Missouri city. The tornado was among the most destructive in U.S. Home Depot had argued that the May 2011 tornado packing 200-mph winds was an act of God, making the lawsuit’s defendants not liable for the deaths of Russell Howard, 5-year-old daughter Harli Howard and 19-month-old son Hayze Howard.įive other people died in the store that day as the EF5 tornado toppled wall panels onto the Home Depot victims.
District Judge Douglas Harpool threw out Edie Howard Housel’s wrongful-death case Thursday at Home Depot’s request, ruling the woman failed to sufficiently prove any design failures of the 11-year-old store were to blame. KANSAS CITY - A federal judge has tossed out a woman’s lawsuit against Home Depot over the deaths of her husband and two children who had sought refuge inside the big-box store destroyed during the devastating 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri.
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