As St. Louis nears the one-week mark since a deadly tornado cut through a wide swath of the city, city officials say that they have fully pivoted from response to recovery. And for some affected residents, part of that recovery means finding a lawyer to answer questions.
But with many of the people who need help the most unable to travel far from what’s left of their homes, attorneys are going to them.
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“Shelter, food, water, lawyers,” said Matt Devoti, an alderman in the city who is also a trial attorney. When he spoke to SLM this morning, he and other attorneys as well as law students had just set up behind the Urban League building on Kingshighway, not far from the pallets of bottled water and right next to a truck distributing hot food.
They planned to be there as well as at the O’Fallon Park YMCA through Saturday, answering legal questions and offering advice for anyone affected by the tornados.
Devoti said that generally, he’s finding people’s questions fall into three broad categories: Tenants dealing with landlords (and vice-versa); property owners dealing with contractors; and everyone who has insurance dealing with their insurance company. “Insurers are difficult to deal with,” Devoti said. “I put five kids through college dealing with insurance companies.”
Renters, he said, are asking questions about whether they still need to pay rent even if they can’t access their house, or if the place they were renting is now uninhabitable. “It’s either occupation, getting possessions, or how do I deal with the financial aspect,” he said.
The legal presence in North City was coordinated along with the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, an organization that responded in a similar capacity to the 2011 Joplin tornado. In the wake of Joplin, the association put together a resource book for attorneys doing this sort of work, so that if they don’t have the answer to a question, they have somewhere to look.
“You just want to help. You feel lucky to not need the help, so you want to offer the help,” said Lindsay Rakers, an attorney with the Sumner Law Group who was working Thursday morning at the Urban League site and had also done similar work in Joplin. She remarked that the response she’d seen in the past few days in St. Louis was heartening: “This is tragic but it’s also really inspiring.”
Katherine Larson, a Washington University law student clerking for the Simon Law Firm, was on site Thursday morning, too. A native St. Louisan, she said that part of the reason she wanted to volunteer was because she didn’t want anyone to go through this tragedy alone. “So whether that means I’m raking leaves or sitting at the MATA booth scribing, I’m happy to help,” she said.
Emily Thenhaus, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Cara Spencer, said that the legal aid was an example of how the needs of those affected by the tornado are going to continue to change. “It’s going to be a continuous evaluation to figure out what are the most pressing needs of the community today, and how do we really line up the resources, not just from the city, but from partners,” she said. She added that the resources on offer at places like the Urban League will continue to evolve.
Devoti said that some of the questions lawyers on the scene had gotten concerned the city’s Building Division tagging structures to indicate whether they’re safe to enter. A green tag means a building is safe. A yellow tag means to use caution and don’t go in alone. A red tag means the building is dangerous.
However, the city isn’t kicking anyone out. Misinformation had spread on social media about the tags, apparently leading some residents to think they would not be able to access their own residences.
“Right now it is not our intent, nor are we going to be punishing residents in any way, shape or form, for entering your property,” Mayor Cara Spencer said at a press conference this afternoon. She added that the Building Division would refine its communication to residents to better nip misinformation in the bud, but she stressed that notices from the Building Division are meant to be “purely informational” rather than punitive.
“If you’re not a building professional, you’re not educated as to what a missing part of your roof could really do to the structural integrity of your building,” she said. “And we want to make that information very, very clear and available.”
Deputy building commissioner Dylan Mosier said that his division had tagged approximately 1,500 buildings as of yesterday afternoon.
“These aren’t condemnations. They’re not violations or anything like that,” Mosier said. “We don’t want to re-victimize people.”
Spencer said that the city has frequently referred to 5,000 buildings that were identified as being in the tornado’s path. Now the number of buildings that were actually damaged is coming into focus, though she doesn’t yet have a specific number. “The 5,000 was the initial estimate of the number of buildings within the zone, I believe that’s come down as far as [what’s] specifically damaged,” she said.
Addressing larger safety concerns in the affected area of North City, Spencer noted that she and her team have been there “all day, every day” and that the area continues to feel safe.
“It continues to be an area that has challenges in that regard, no doubt,” she said. “But at the same time, it is an area that, largely speaking, I personally, feel safe in.”
Near the end of the day, Devoti recounted a story he’d heard from attorneys going door to door near the O’Fallon Park YMCA. As the lawyers were answering a woman’s questions, her power came back on and then ice cubes could be heard falling into her freezer’s ice tray, the first ice it had made since Friday. She immediately walked it across the street so her neighbors could have a cold drink.
“It struck me that, first load of ice from the machine, it goes across the street,” he said.
