'It's not coming back'

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September 1, 2008

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Mon Sep 01, 2008, 11:05 PM CDT

By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

PICHER, Okla. — John Baker and some of his friends were picking through the rubble of what remained of his cousin’s tornado-ravaged house in Picher.

There wasn’t much left, but they found a few things they thought might be salvaged and threw them in the back of a pickup. They hurried because their time is running out.

As a giant “knuckle” claw grabbed some debris nearby and dropped it into a trailer, the 17-year-old Baker said: “It’s actually kind of sad. I want to see this place get cleaned up, but they are getting rid of the town. It’s not coming back.”

Soon, the pile of debris that was his cousin’s house will be gone. It will be trucked to a landfill in Southeast Kansas.

After the debris sat untouched for more than three months, federal and state emergency-management authorities finally settled on a plan that is clearing the rubble from the May 10 tornado that strafed the south side of Picher, killing seven people.

Each load that leaves Picher is monitored by an employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The employee, who said FEMA rules do not permit him to give out his name, said he had spent time in Greensburg, Kan., where a tornado in May 2007 leveled most of the town.

“In Greensburg, they are rebuilding. That town will come back,” he said. “But here, that’s not going to happen. It’s really sad to see this town die. It’s gut-wrenching to watch, and the people who lived here must feel the same way.”

Picher, the epicenter of the Tri-State Mining District, one of the world’s richest lead and zinc mining fields, had a population in the 1920s of more than 20,000 people. Today, the town has fewer than a couple of hundred people.

Picher was declared a federal Superfund site in the early 1980s because of heavy-metal contamination. It was ranked as the worst hazardous-waste site in the nation when it was placed on the National Priorities List.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in cooperation with the state of Oklahoma, would spend more than $125 million over the next 25 years on cleanup plans, including the removal of lead-contaminated soil from residential yards. The contaminated soil was linked to high levels of lead poisoning in Picher’s children.

In 2006, a study by the Army Corps of Engineers found that more than one-third of the structures in Picher sit on ground that could collapse at any time. Among the structures are 139 houses, 11 businesses and six churches. Also listed were four playgrounds and parks, including Reunion Park. Even the Picher Mining Field Museum sits on unstable ground.

The study led to the creation of a plan to buy out and relocate residents who voluntarily want to leave Picher and the nearby town of Cardin. The buyout, funded as a joint effort by the EPA and the state of Oklahoma, has been under way for more than a year. The tornado complicated the buyout procedure and, in some instances, pushed many residents to leave sooner than they had planned.

All of the houses that will be bought by the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust will either be moved to a new site near Quapaw or destroyed.

The debris removal started Aug. 19 on the west side of Picher, where the tornado struck first. The cleanup in that part of the town is nearing completion, said Joel Thompson, one of the city’s last remaining employees. Thompson’s home on the outskirts of Picher was among those destroyed.

“It took so long to get the cleanup going because there were so many agencies involved,” Thompson said. “But they were moving fast now. It won’t be long before it’s all gone.”

Thompson said he expects the cleanup to be completed in about three weeks and at a cost that is considerably less than officials first thought. The initial estimate of the cleanup was $4 million, based on 80,000 cubic yards of debris. The actual amount of debris could be closer to 25,000 cubic yards, he said.

The contractor is Young’s General Construction, Poplar Bluff, Mo. The company is being paid $77.99 per ton to remove vegetation and $87.99 per ton to remove construction debris. Each trailer load is weighed.

Picher City Clerk Carolyn Elmore said property owners must give the contractor permission to remove debris from their property. She said 13 property owners “still want access to the site to make sure they have not missed something under the rubble.”

“We pick up nothing of value, and the contractor picks up nothing. It all goes to the landfill,” Thompson said.

About the emergency-management people who have been working in Picher, Elmore said: “They have helped us so much. We could not have asked for better people. They are sympathetic to what has happened here. They have never seen a place where there are no plans to rebuild.”

Moving on

Of the roughly 700 structures in Picher, only 150 were to be moved to a new subdivision that is being constructed near Quapaw. The tornado that struck Picher on May 10 destroyed about 20 of the houses that were to be moved, said Johnny Seeling, owner of Twin Bridges Co., the company that is moving the structures.