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1. #MERCY HOSPITAL JOPLIN MO WOMENS HEALTH CENTER FULL#
2. #MERCY HOSPITAL JOPLIN MO WOMENS HEALTH CENTER WINDOWS#

Most builders don’t design their buildings specifically to withstand extreme storms and floods, just to be easy to evacuate, Gould said. “You can’t allow the wind and the rain to get into the structure and basically scour through the structure, because once that happens, you’re going to lose that entire space,” he said. The building was one of the only structures in the tornado's path left standing.

Missouri requires all patient rooms to have windows, but they make a structure vulnerable to high winds.

#MERCY HOSPITAL JOPLIN MO WOMENS HEALTH CENTER WINDOWS#

Windows are the key when it comes to disaster proofing a hospital, says Nathan Gould, a structural engineer at ABS consulting in St. That glass is now put in new intensive care units and other parts of hospitals that house patients who can’t easily be moved or evacuated. Mercy went to work rebuilding the hospital, working with an Iowa company to design special tornado-proof glass that can withstand up to 250 mile-an-hour winds.

#MERCY HOSPITAL JOPLIN MO WOMENS HEALTH CENTER FULL#

“The parking lot was full of cars that were just entwined together, you couldn’t even make out the models of the vehicles.” “When we pulled up to the hospital, all the windows were blown out, there were parts of the roof that were blown off, inside the hospital was exposed,” Farnen recalled. The lights suddenly go out, and within seconds, the wind blows the chairs out of frame, the lights off the ceiling - until there’s nothing left but a cloud of dust.įarnen watched the footage of the destroyed hospital on the news, and immediately left for Joplin. For a few seconds, everything is normal: orderly rows of chairs and a stack of magazines on a table. John’s ER waiting room shows how everything was destroyed. The whole process took about 45 seconds, but seemed like eternity.”Įerie security footage of a St. We could feel a tight pressure in our heads as the tornado annihilated the hospital and the surrounding area. “We suffered this in complete darkness, unaware of anyone else’s status, worried, scared. “The whole hospital shook and vibrated as we heard glass shattering, light bulbs popping, walls collapsing, people screaming, the ceiling caving in above us, and water pipes breaking, showering water down on everything,” emergency room doctor Kevin Kitka wrote later in a blog post. But the hospital’s windows shattered, destroying the interior.

In newspaper pictures, it rose out of the flattened rubble, one of the only buildings left standing. In the 2011, the outer building in Joplin remained intact. Windows - the very things that make the new Festus hospital wing seem so different than the old - are the feature that make hospitals the most vulnerable. Since then, the health company has strengthened its construction methods and disaster plans to include storm-resistant materials and backup generators. “We plan for if we lose power, if we lose water, we plan for a lot of emergencies, but we never plan to just lose everything,” John Farnen, Mercy’s vice president of facilities said of the Joplin tornado.īut in the Joplin storm, the Mercy hospital did lose everything. For Mercy officials, creating modern-day fortresses is essential to keeping the communities they serve safe. Mercy has hospitals through Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, in the middle of Tornado Alley, where these violent storms are most frequent. Since then, Mercy has made it a mission to build safer hospitals, with stronger windows, walls and power sources. Six people died in the hospital that day. Louis-based based Mercy health system after one of the most destructive tornadoes in recent memory hit St. Making its new hospitals safer has become a top priority for St. But Mercy Hospital Jefferson is safer, too. The atrium still smells of fresh paint, and instead of dark, winding hallways, windows let in natural light.īuilders designed it to be prettier and more user-friendly. A visitor to the new wing of the Mercy hospital in Festus can likely tell immediately where the old building ends and the new part begins.