May 16 began sunlit, the breeze soft, the sky tranquil and clear. Dallas Holland-Mims moved her lunch meeting to BrickTop’s patio. John Pitts got ready to plant more of the roses he babies—Apricot Swirl this time, and a florist-quality red. Rev. Dr. Dietra Wise Baker was running around Webster Groves in flip-flops, doing errands before she donned her faculty gown for Eden Theological Seminary’s commencement.
Then the sky went black, and the heavens let loose. The hail was the size of quarters in Weldon Spring. “Oh, it’s going to get bigger than that,” said Steve Templeton, chief meteorologist at KMOV. A report came in: egg-size hail in Harvester. “Just wait,” he told Kent Ehrhardt, who’d come in to help stay on top of the new data that was flashing in every two minutes. The energy the storm was bouncing back on radar was intense, coded purple. People were about to get pummeled.
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Templeton had entered the hyperfocused storm-watch state in which his body ceases to need food, drink, or the loo. This was one of those times when all his training came together, so he could be most useful to the community. He’d issued a First Alert Weather Day warning, knowing that what was coming Friday would be no ordinary storm. But what no one could know was whether a tornado would form. Hurricanes, you can see coming for days. Tornados form so fast, you’re lucky to get 10 minutes’ warning of a possible touchdown.
The tricky time would be between 2 and 4 p.m., he told viewers. Kids would be getting out of school. Workers might not have access to alerts.
By the time the storm reached Chesterfield, the hail was slamming down like icy tennis balls, but there was no strong tornado signature yet.
Then he saw the hook echo.
A hook echo is a distinctive, hook-shaped pattern on weather radar associated with supercell thunderstorms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory. It indicates a strong updraft and rotation within the storm. The hook is formed by precipitation wrapping around the backside of the storm’s updraft.
Now he knew a tornado was a definite possibility. Raindrops were circling the storm, rotation building fast. Below that spiral was a little curled hook—nothing inside it because the air was rushing upward and the raindrops were having a hard time falling through.
TV stations started interrupting regular programs. Holland-Mims scurried into the Plaza Frontenac parking garage and found a crowd of shoppers; the stores had all been evacuated. WashU sent a text alert: SEEK SHELTER NOW. All the animals at the zoo, trained for emergency recall, trotted or waddled into their fortified shelters—except Raja and his mother, a worried keeper being no match for elephantine will.
At 2:34 p.m., the National Weather Service upped the watch to a warning. Seven minutes later, the tornado touched down in Clayton, then twisted through the northern part of Forest Park. On the southern side, straight-line winds sheared through the zoo, where Raja and Pearl had waded into their pools and hunkered down. Thousands of visitors had already been rushed to shelter in the basements of the Antelope, Bird, and Primate houses. Below the herpetarium, a curator launched into a lecture about lizards to distract the humans from the storm.
Tornado Watch: Conditions are favorable for the development of tornadoes in and near the watch area. Be prepared, stay informed, and have a plan. Tornado Warning: Conditions are favorable for the development of tornadoes in and near the watch area. Seek shelter immediately in a pre-designated safe location.
Tornados blow fast; you never get much warning. This is why meteorologists repeat themselves like therapists—get to your safe space—and nag us, on balmy days, to prepare. “Everybody should have a NOAA weather radio in their house,” muttered Templeton. “I’ve been talking about this for years. Today is not the day to order it on Amazon.”
From Forest Park, the tornado headed through the Central West End to the historic Ville and its surrounding neighborhoods. Now the parent thunderstorms were moving fast, and there was a rear-flank downdraft: air dropping down and wrapping around the storm and up into the tornado just as warm, humid air blows in. That had created a narrow, whirling column, a dervish that grew stronger as it spun. A curtain of rain shrouded the funnel, but Doppler radar told Templeton the velocity of the rotation, and its forward speed was shocking.
In Lewis Place, John Pitts looked through his dining-room window and saw a whirling mass of tires, roofing tiles, and bricks moving down the street toward him. Templeton was seeing the same mess on radar: a “tornado debris signature” that meant the violent spin had dropped to ground level and was lofting any loose object in its path. The tornado was now more than a mile wide—seven Busch Stadiums would fit inside—and it was tearing across neighborhoods at 152 miles per hour.
GOING THROUGH IT
Absently, mid-errand, Baker answered her cell. It was DeMarco Davidson, a friend, fellow community organizer, and executive director of Metropolitan Congregations United. His voice sounded strange, and she pressed the phone closer to her ear.
“We’re trapped,” he said, “and I can’t call 911—the calls keep dropping.”
The bell tower and roof of Centennial Christian Church, where Baker was an associate minister, had collapsed. Davidson and Sherrill Jackson had been on the first floor, meeting about community engagement, and they’d fallen through the torn-open floor to the basement. They were alive but injured, buried under the rubble. Ms. Pat—Patricia Penelton, who’d helped cook and clean up the church’s free Friday lunch—was somewhere in the church, too.
“Let me call,” Baker said, heart pounding against her rib cage. She hit the three numbers and reached the county 911; when they tried to transfer her, that call dropped, too. She called back and was told she’d have to drive to the city and call from there.
Panicked, she called Shameem Clark Hubbard, an alderwoman she’d come to know and trust. Hubbard was already on her way to Fountain Park—she’d heard it had been hit hard—but she had no idea anyone was trapped inside the church. She hung up to call first responders, and Baker raced into DSW for a pair of sneakers, sobbing at the counter. Out on the sidewalk, tossing aside the useless flip-flops and jamming her feet into the sneakers, she answered her phone again. Hubbard had the fire chief on the line. Exactly where were the people trapped? Oh, God. She hadn’t even thought to ask. She called DeMarco back, but he didn’t answer. With shaky fingers, she texted—and somehow he managed to text back.
Firefighters and paramedics entered the church from the rear; the long flight of steps out front had been smashed into rubble. Baker’s cell rang again. Ms. Pat, beloved by all, had been killed when the tower collapsed.
“This is turning really horrible, really fast,” Baker thought. “And it’s not going to be just us.”
Darnell “HardTimez” Forest’s nickname was never meant to be a prophecy, just a reference to the auto-body shop he once owned. The afternoon of May 16, he was in the alley behind his house on Cottage Avenue, patiently restoring a wrecked car to supplement his retirement income. With no warning sirens, he didn’t even have time to make it from the alley to his back yard. Arms wrapped tight around a little tree, he watched, hypnotized, as a much bigger tree swayed back and forth as though deciding where to fall. Finally it snapped, missing Forest and smashing the top of a neighbor’s truck.
A neighbor yelled to Forest from a car. “You got room?” Forest called back, and they waved him over, even though five big men were already jammed into a vehicle the size of a Mini Cooper and making awkward straight-guy jokes about their proximity. As soon as the wind simmered down, Forest said, “Drive around front. You can all come in my house.” His castle, he jokingly calls it. He lives alone, and he’s been there for 26 years. He always gets compliments on the place.
His friend drove around to the front. Half of Forest’s tidy white brick two-story had been blown away.
Holland-Mims was trying to get to Beyond Sweet Kitchen + Bar, the restaurant that’s her proudest creation. Highway 40 was gridlock. Finally she made it off the Kingshighway exit and saw Sonny, one of her employees, walking shirtless and bleeding toward Barnes Hospital, two other employees bracing him. At McPherson, she skidded to a stop and half walked, half ran the next five blocks. In heels.
She made her way through the people milling in the street and tried to step onto the pile of shifting loose bricks in front of the restaurant door. Everyone was safe, but the building looked like Godzilla had leaned over and taken a bite of it. Alternately crying and cursing, Holland-Mims stepped through tossed furniture to rescue what she could: the cash register; some of the liquor; autographed photos of Nelly, Cedric the Entertainer, and other St. Louis celebs who’d eaten there.
Her cell had been ringing, too: Just west on Delmar, the three offices for the trade school, home services, and adult day care she runs were all destroyed beyond repair.
When John Pitts heard the storm warning on TV, he and his son, who’d stopped by to visit, made sure everything was battened down—the barbecue pit, the umbrella, the lawn furniture. All the fuss was still out west, far as they could tell, so Pitts took some fish out of the freezer and ran it under warm water.
Minutes later, the daylight vanished.
In the Army, Pitts had traveled the world, but he’d never seen anything like this. The trees were bent over at a right angle, facing toward Page, and the wind was so hard it scared him. He went to the front door and tried to open it, not even sure why, and the wind slammed it shut. Standing under the archway of the vestibule, he murmured, “Lord, if this is the way I’m going to have to go, take me, I’m ready.” The house was shaking, and he could hear stuff crashing. Then he heard—he wasn’t sure what, a voice in his head?—saying, “Be still.” He called out to his son, “Don’t move, just be still.”
When it was over, there was no debris in a 3-foot circle around him. His son and two dogs were safe, too. He opened the front door, saw a piece of joist wood hanging down, and thought, OK, I can push that back up, no problem. Then he looked down and saw a tossed pile of bricks—his roof and top story—whipped loose from a house that had stood solid since 1906.
The metal banister looked drunk, bent and listing to one side, yet the sweet porch swing was intact. The formal living-room drapes were neatly tied back, yet the floor above was entirely gone, as were the roof, the entire back of the house, and part of the front wall. Through the bared interior, you could see a narrow stairway filled with matchsticks of broken wood. Yet Pitts’ prized yellow rosebushes were in full bloom, untouched.
He didn’t waste time moaning. The street was so full of debris and broken trees that emergency vehicles couldn’t get through, so he, his son, and a neighbor went out to clear it all away. While he was working, his phone rang: His wife, Yolanda, who’d been at the hospital receiving dialysis, wanted to make sure he was OK.
“Baby, I’m fine. But the house—” he took a deep breath. “We have no house anymore.” This home had been in his family since he was 2 years old, and he’d moved back to care for his mother. Pitts had always been able to provide a home for the wife he adored—not just a roof over their heads but a place where they could feel safe, happy, and at ease.
Now what?
Kevin Roberts, the unofficial mayor of the Field of Hope encampment at North 10th Street, had the top of his tent open all that morning so the breeze could come through. At 2:30 p.m., he was sitting inside the tent, talking with the security team about closing up some of the holes in the encampment’s back fence. When the wind blew up hard, two other guys plunged into the rain with Roberts to tighten the drawstrings, pulling the tarp taut and restaking the tent. With no trees, they knew the wind would just shoot across the field.
Conversation fragmented: “Hold on.” “Hold that string right there.” “Got a leak here.” “Pass me a cigarette.” They stayed calm, even thought about playing cards, but when the wind started rocking them back and forth, the game was forgotten.
Living outdoors, Roberts has often listened to the wind: “It’s almost like a song, different tones at different times. But this was a harsh, loud woooh, thunder behind it.”
They huddled, four men and a dog named Savage. A Doberman-pit-bull-terrier mix, she sticks with Roberts like a Swiss Guard soldier protecting the pope. That afternoon, she was pacing, ears pricked, desperate to get outside and confront whatever was attacking them. “She’s a little bipolar,” he said fondly, “like everybody up here. But she means well.”
When he dared look outside, eight tents were trashed, one of them blown a block away. Clothes and garbage were strewn everywhere, chairs scattered. Hours passed, and no one came to check on them. First responders were using houses and cars, not the shredded tents of the unhoused, to locate the injured.
That evening, Roberts called Severin Pelekara of inExcelsis, a nonprofit whose volunteers and former clients serve the unhoused. “We got hit bad,” he said. “Could you just come and talk to us?” Pelekara made it there a little after 9 p.m., and he brought sleeping bags and tarps, plus leftovers from a church event the day before. Everyone was safe, just shaken. Mainly, he realized, people just needed “to vent their fear. They felt kind of abandoned.”
The next morning, they started the cleanup. Roberts urged “sturdier living quarters,” by which he meant they should “reinforce the tents with 2x4s, and instead of having one pole as anchor, go to two.”
AFTERWARD
The tornado was an EF3, by far the strongest of the 39 tornados that hit the area this spring. Five people had lost their lives to the storm, and much of the city was decimated. Emergency crews and volunteers were still lifting trees off cars and houses, clearing them from roads. Seen from above, the tornado scar stretched across St. Louis, the damage starting on the east edge of Clayton and moving northeast across Forest Park, WashU, the Delmar Maker District, then right up Euclid to The Ville, The Greater Ville, Kingsway East, the O’Fallon neighborhood, and across the river to Granite City and Edwardsville.
The tornado was continuously on the ground for 23 miles, and it caused a kind of destruction that people had never imagined—because who would want to visualize that? How would you go to sleep at night, if you were always remembering that your walls could be ripped off and your bed hurled onto the street?
People bore scars of their own, shiny new skin forming over the shock and loss and remembered terror. These scars would never vanish, and the neighborhoods would never be the same again. We had just watched the crumbling of what, historically and architecturally, should have been some of St. Louis’ premier neighborhoods.
At Fountain Park, Carla Washington set up a card table and loaded it with fruit, snacks, water, cans of soup and beans, bread, and protein bars. “Oh, yeah, I have damage, too,” she said cheerfully. “My walls are separated from my staircase. Moved here in 2019, and I’d just gotten the rehab done! But I was blessed; it could’ve been worse.”
People forgot their own losses to help one another, and they welcomed the strangers who joined in. One of the Left Bank Books staffers “saved a person who was stuck in their car right after the storm had really kicked into gear and we’d locked the store doors,” a colleague wrote on Facebook. “Also had to convince that person to FORGET THE STUPID BALLOONS that they kept trying to push back into the car instead of getting inside the store immediately.”
“I’ve never had a stranger cry in my arms until this weekend,” someone else posted, “and that memory is cemented in my mind forever.”
WashU med students delivered food to older people who already knew and trusted them from home visits. Volunteer practitioners came to Fountain Park to give shoulder massages and acupressure treatments, and the gentle healing unloosed a lot of tears. Moms from Webster Groves brought art projects to distract the kids. “The tornado was funny,” said a boy of 11 (“and a half,” he specified). “I liked it. A minute later, I was scared a little bit.” His little sister, age 8, insisted that she wasn’t scared at all. “A tree fell on my school. But my school’s not broke.” And what about their house? Neither child answered.
Houses south of Delmar had suffered, too, but they already had crime-scene tape and clean-boarded windows and neat preprinted signs from disaster-relief companies. To the north, people got together to nail scrap boards, and the tarps were draped haphazardly, like someone naked clutching for cover. “They’re already coming to ask if they can buy my land,” a woman said. “Hell, no.”
All of that beautiful old architecture, gone. We had already razed so much of it, with New Orleans and other cities snatching up the salvage. St. Louis bricks were fired from heavy clay by Italian immigrants well over a century ago. Now, their red dust stained the alleys. Bits of decorative painted trim, art nouveau ornament, and limestone cornices littered the ground. The tops of buildings had crumbled edges, and outer layers of brick were peeled off in sheets, as though somebody had stuck a sharp wedge down and flipped them unstuck. Rooms were exposed like dollhouse cutouts; you could see people’s beds, their mirrors, their toilets.
Anybody with access to a washing machine was doing load after load of laundry: “Everything we were able to get out had these black, gritty blotches,” one woman said. “Even things that were in the closet with the door closed.”
A man in his 50s was out mowing, steering around the rubble. “It’s my mom’s house,” he explained. “She said, ‘I want a clean front yard.’”
A WEEK LATER
In seven days, chaos was reduced to orderly piles, sobs to a quiet, grim evaluation of future options. Mobile johns and charging stations were set up in neighborhood parks. The Young Socialists served dinners donated by Indian and Chinese restaurants; lawyers put together bags of soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toilet tissue, and diapers. There was a rhythm to things.
At Centennial, where Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke, the doors were padlocked shut. Above them, that lacy white, almost Moorish ornamental arch was intact, a reminder of past grace. Below the threshold was a hill of broken limestone and brick where the steps used to be.
“I heard about the church,” said neighbor Vanessa Harper, shaking her head sadly. “They cook the best food over there. Greens and cornbread and real homemade cheese macaroni.”
“They’re always helping us,” said another neighbor. “Who’s going to help them?”
The day after the tornado, Baker, who’d been planning to leave as soon as the church found a full-time pastor, surprised herself by agreeing to serve as the transitional pastor. “I was a youth minister here,” she explained. “I was ordained here. I couldn’t leave them at a time like this.”
As the church moderator, Ms. Pat would have been the one to lead the official vote confirming Baker…but Ms. Pat was gone. Nobody could believe it. Tall, kind, funny, and tireless, Penelton had thrown her energy at anything that needed doing, spreading warmth and compassion as she went.
Three days after her death, Centennial lost another member of the congregation, a frail older woman whom Ms. Pat took care of “like a daughter.” Baker figured the shock and loss had broken the woman’s heart.
Amid all the grieving, church members had to meet and decide their future. “Black churches are the No. 1 land-owning spaces for Black people,” Baker says now. “These churches are markers of an investment by a generation of African Americans to create space and power when they couldn’t do it anywhere else. This church was a sanctuary. We have members in their 90s who were born here. But they have to prepare to let that go.”
They would not, however, let their mission go. They would not leave Fountain Park. They would not cut back on their housing, hunger, and health ministries. They could not build on the exact site of the church, but they could build right behind it. They’d replant trees in Fountain Park, “make sure it is more beautiful than it was before,” and landscape the ruins of the church so the park continued right into their front yard. Then they’d figure out how to build a multipurpose worship space and add a health clinic, support for small businesses, and—more needed than ever, now—affordable housing.
“A lot of our people had insurance,” she says, “but the contractors weren’t calling them back. ‘We don’t service your area’—a lot of them got that.” It’s going to be a fight, she predicts, “to make sure that North City is done right. This is a way for the city to pay the restitution it owes historically. Restitution for the redlining, for the divestment of education, for the choices that have been made. Stop meeting as a committee—you don’t need ‘a plan.’ Go over to North St. Louis and figure out how to make these people whole.”
Inside Beyond Sweet, long sparkly gold hangings turned slowly one way then the other, like runway models. Beneath them was utter disarray, the wooden ice-cream-parlor chairs thrown about like there was a bar fight. A big push broom leaned, weary, against a huge front window crushed into ice. On the new patio, wind had whipped the tops off the tables. “Empty chairs and empty tables,” that melancholy refrain from Les Mis, came to mind.
Then Holland-Mims pulled up and shattered the mood, her face bright with resolve. The woman has energy. She lost not only this beautiful restaurant—which has graced the cover of more than one local publication, and the adjoining event space—but also three other businesses down the street: Beyond Care Home Services; Beyond Care Adult Day Care; and Beyond Education, a trade school for certified nursing aides, phlebotomists, truck drivers, and others. She had just relocated the school to Delmar, and the day before the tornado, she had mopped up the last bit of drywall dust, admired the black marble conference table, and sat down at her new desk for the first time.
Now she was looking for substitute office space, arranging for 22 windows and doors to get boarded up, and trying to figure out how to get her full-time restaurant employees paid until she could reopen someplace else. Since 2013, Holland-Mims has helped anchor the Delmar Maker District. The tornado blazed through all that work in seconds. “This one, not that one; this one, not that,” she said, imitating its cruel caprice. Across the street, Ben Poremba’s newest restaurant was in ruins. Next door, Third Degree Glass Factory—what could be more fragile?—stood intact.
A born entrepreneur, Holland-Mims opened her first business at 19. “I like creating things,” she said. “Being able to think something up, draw it out, and put it in motion, see the wheels start spinning.” Now, all five of her businesses were homeless.
“I can’t quit,” she said. “I’ve got a 15-year-old son lookin’ up to me. So on one side of my brain, I’m cleaning stuff up and figuring stuff out, trying to undo things that took months to implement. And on the other side, it’s, This is what we’re going to do next.”
Forest was living in the basement of his blown-away house. Asked what part of the damage hurt worst, he squinched his face tight, fighting to hold back sudden tears. “This house,” he said in a low, choked voice, “is the only real thing I ever had.”
He came here from Mississippi, had a degree in medical technology and wanted a master’s in business so he could go home and run his own lab. But he wound up working at BJC, and now he’s retired, with friends so loyal, they climbed up to help get a tarp over his roof right away. Like 80 percent of the St. Louisans hit hardest, he had no insurance. “Until now, all the tornados hit everywhere else,” he said wryly. “St. Louis was a safe haven.”
Sunlight caught the tears in the creases of his still-handsome face. “Oh, baby, you made me empty out,” he said. “I’m sorry you saw those tears.”
The Pittses went to stay with their son in Soulard. “He’s got rules and regulations, and I’m not following any one of ’em,” John Pitts said with a grin. His son kept reminding him of all the family rules he used to make, teasing, “This is my house now.” Pitts grinned and pointed out, “You never listened, either.”
He and Yolanda missed the ease of their own home. “We’re both retired, on a fixed income,” John said, “so we’re stacking our chips, trying to see where we can go.” He had just heard the mayor announce that demolition would begin. Most of their stuff was still inside, bits of sentiment and memory trapped in the rubble. John’s Army memorabilia lined his basement man cave, but he couldn’t get to it. He went to the house every day, doing a little cleanup at a time. The day before, he had extricated a silver spoon that commemorated his parents’ 25th anniversary. “That’s enough for me right now,” he said.
Meanwhile, there were flowers back on the porch. A spider plant grew in a yellow smiley mug from one of his mother’s hospital stays, and another was in a cup that read, “Be happy always.” Even now? How? He ducked his head toward his wife and said, “We woke up laughing this morning, and we went to bed laughing. Even though we have pretty much nothing, some people are worse than us. We’ve been without before, and we’ll probably be without again, but after 42 years of marriage, the only thing I could be without and be totally devastated would be her.”
MAKING SENSE OF TRAGEDY
On one of the wrecked homes, a sign was still visible: God Bless Our House. Another had a sign that read, Jesus heals. Either they were contradictions, or they proved that faith outlasts tragedy.
When insurance companies speak of an “act of God,” Baker winces. “I think that’s theologically incorrect,” she says. “That’s how some people make meaning. They will say, ‘It’s God’s will.’ And I will tell them, ‘Stop blaming God. This is something to lay at the feet of humans.’”
Templeton says science cannot measure a relationship between global warming and the recent spate of tornados, but Baker goes there: “This has to do with humans who have not been good stewards. Experts have been telling us that our choices are going to impact weather patterns. We have set off imbalances that are wreaking havoc around the world.”
Holland-Mims defines the tornado as an act of God—“and I trust God,” she says. “I’m very saddened, but it was supposed to happen. Nothing I can do but keep praying and move on.”
Forest argued with a friend that “this wasn’t God. It was Satan that caused this destruction.”
“It’s just something that happens,” Pitts says quietly.
In Roberts’ world view, “nothin’ just happens. What happens is meant to happen. God put us all in places we need to be, not where we want to be. Where we want to be is layin’ on a beach somewhere!”
Some people shrug at random fate, analyze causes, or throw themselves into rebuilding; others reach deep inside for a way to accept what they cannot control. Either way, they find acceptance. Either way, they go on.
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