JOPLIN, Mo. — Nearly eight months after the May 22 tornado destroyed it, the Home Depot store is reopening at its same location, 3110 E. 20th St.

Store manager Steve Cope said he’s excited about being back in business and that the new store will boost morale. The store was the scene of several storm fatalities, including an employee and customers.

“We’re going to be able to help the city of Joplin rebuild,” Cope said. “Our building being built back I hope will show that we’re here for the long haul. It’s a good feeling to know that we’re going to be back, and it will give the community options of where they want to purchase their equipment.”

After the tornado, a temporary tent store was opened in the parking lot in June and was up until the end of December. The new store is the most recent prototype for Home Depot stores across the country, Cope said.

The store will dedicate a memorial to the employee and customers who died in the storm at the old store. A fountain next to the entrance will have several benches around it and a plaque that reads: “In remembrance of the lives lost and to a future of rebuilding in their memory.” Another memorial is in the employee break room.

Cope, who was not at the store when the tornado hit, was there within 20 minutes.

“I just was not prepared for what I saw,” he said. “The No. 1 thing, though, was: Are all of my associates all right?”

Rescuers found one person alive in the store’s wreckage on May 23. They also had recovered seven bodies under the concrete, and serious injuries were reported at the location, which was one of Joplin’s ground zero locations after the storm.

M. “Dean” Wells was the head of Home Depot’s electrical department and died in the storm. Wells ushered people to the safest parts of the store until one of the walls collapsed on him one day before his 42nd anniversary with his wife, Sue.



NEW FEATURES

Cope said the new store includes a reinforced room, a lower ceiling and skylights to help with energy efficiency, and an expanded garden area. Other features include a tool rental section and a new design in the 100,000-square-foot store.

Additionally, the store will have workshops for adults and children regarding home improvement projects, and it plans to offer a “try before you buy” tool clinic.

The building permit issued by the city in November for the Home Depot was for $5 million. The store employs about 100 people.



TILT-UP CONSTRUCTION

Bill Davis, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service station in Springfield, said that by the time the tornado hit the Home Depot and other stores on Range Line Road, the wind speed within it was 170 mph, which rates as an EF-4. He said it was starting to decrease in intensity as it approached Duquesne.

Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes said the new building is still a tilt-up construction building, and that it has been built to all local ordinances and codes. Commercial buildings must withstand wind forces of at least 90 mph, according to the city.

“This was an incredibly powerful storm that destroyed every structure in its path, including schools, commercial and retail structures, and making the construction of our store, or just about any other structure, indefensible,” Holmes said. “In terms of the structure of the building, that’s the context you have to put it in is just the power of that storm.”

He stressed that the new store’s reinforced room is not a storm shelter per se:

“It’s a reinforced room, but we don’t hold our stores out to be designated storm shelters,” Holmes said. “We felt putting in the reinforced room was the right thing to do considering the sentiment of the community after such a terrible tragedy.”

Because of the severity of the Joplin tornado and its effect on structures, the Tilt-Up Concrete Association, based in Mount Vernon, Iowa, formed a task force to study the structural damage. The association’s website says it is a group of contractors and manufacturers “with the interest of improving the quality and acceptance of tilt-up construction.”

Jim Baty, technical director for the association, said the task force’s report will be released next week.

“They went through an extensive investigation on the (Home Depot) facility, and the force loads were exponentially greater than what building codes and engineers perceived them to be,” Baty said.

In layman’s terms, tilt-up construction is where reinforced concrete slabs are cast on site and put in place with cranes, Baty said, and this particular method of construction is especially dependent on the roof for stability.

“It is used in a myriad of building types and is quite possibly the most diverse of construction methods for building typology,” Baty said, and it’s mostly the basis for stores like Home Depot because it is economical and structurally efficient.





Store opening



A BOARD-CUTTING CEREMONY is set for 5 p.m. today at the store. It will kick off a “Neighborhood Night” that goes until 8 p.m. A balloon drop, prizes, food and entertainment are planned. The store’s mascot, Homer, will be on hand, and registers will be open. The store will officially open at 6 a.m. Thursday.

THE HOME DEPOT FOUNDATION is donating $500,000 to the Community Foundation of the Ozarks for the Joplin Recovery Fund, according to company officials.