Sun, Nov 22 2009
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The tornadoes destroyed 784 houses in Missouri and 169 in Kansas. They damaged 1,819 houses in Missouri and 330 in Kansas. The figures do not include outbuildings and barns. The tornadoes destroyed 53 businesses in Missouri and 21 in Kansas, and they damaged 103 businesses in Missouri and 19 in Kansas.
The Missouri Department of Insurance estimated that the May 4, 2003, storms in Missouri caused insured losses in excess of $400 million. The National Weather Service station in Springfield said the losses in Southwest Missouri totaled $197 million. The losses in Southeast Kansas totaled $81 million. Swiss Re, an international insurance agency, said the storms that swept across Missouri and other parts of the Midwest in early May of 2003 caused $3.2 billion in insured losses, making the tornado outbreak the single most costly natural catastrophe in North America in that year. Rising up The twisters ripped apart families, homes and entire communities. But they did not overwhelm the will of the people whose lives were upended. The storms did not destroy their dreams. They only tested their resilience, their resolve. “If we didn’t have the ice storm, I don’t think you could tell that a tornado hit,” Steve Lawver, director of economic development in Carl Junction, said recently. “Everything has been fixed or repaired.” A new Community Center and Heritage Museum anchors Franklin, Kan. New homes have gone up there, and others have been repaired. A new community park was constructed. “The people of Franklin are the reason the town is doing so well,” said Craig Stokes, chairman of the Franklin Community Council. “They didn’t sit around waiting for someone to help them. They just went to work.” Julie Johnson, the city clerk in Pierce City, took shelter in the National Guard Armory, a fortress-like structure that served as the town’s storm shelter. Today, Pierce City has three storm shelters, each capable of holding several hundred people. “I just got in the door of the armory, and here it comes right down the middle of Commercial Street. We hid in the bathrooms,” she said. “When we came out of the armory, we couldn’t believe what had happened. It didn’t seem real. Our whole way of life as a town had been changed in a matter of seconds.” Johnson would become the face of Pierce City. She appeared on the Weather Channel’s “Storm Stories” program and on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” The day after the storm, she told former Mayor Mark Peters that she guessed she would have to find a new job. His response: not so fast. “I had no clue about what was to start,” she said. “Here I am five years later, and I’m still doing paperwork and dealing with red tape. I’ve got the books to prove it. We’re still not done. “What I have learned from this is that good things come out of tragedy. It does not seem like it at the time, but we have come back bigger and better. We have a better drugstore and a better grocery store. We have a Dollar General store now and things we never had before. It just takes time.” The town has converted the old armory into the new home for the Clark Center, a mental-health agency that will bring 50 new jobs to Pierce City by the end of the year. But there was one thing that more than anything else symbolized Pierce City’s return. 
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