While the epic disasters that Japan experienced dominated the world’s news for weeks, it was not the only part of the planet to encounter dramatic harm by the forces of nature.
Australia experienced widespread flooding as well as large-scale wildfires, while large portions of East Africa endured epic drought conditions that starved thousands of suffering people. Starting in late July and continuing for the next three months, Thailand experienced a record monsoon season that flooded some of its most significant agricultural lands, rendering them unusable. In Turkey, the country experienced two different earthquakes in two different regions that killed more than a thousand people.
The United States was not spared any natural disasters either.
In early February, a snowstorm stretching nearly 2,000 miles across the United States affected almost 100 million Americans. Shutting down airports, downing power lines, and closing schools, businesses, and even government agencies for days on end, it was a storm for the ages. Again, captured images looked like something out of a Hollywood apocalyptic film.
Chicago’s famous Lakeshore Drive had hundreds of abandoned cars snowed in with nowhere to go. It was a scene duplicated along many busy roads in the Midwest, New England, and the mid-Atlantic states. In many of these regions, downed power lines left thousands of people, businesses, and schools with no electricity for weeks. Emergency management systems, first responders, and utility operators found themselves all stressed and stretched during the winter.
Disaster survivors return to their destroyed homes to search for belongings after a series of tornadoes moved through communities in rural northeastern Alabama. Adam DuBrowa/FEMA
While spring brought warmer temperatures, it did not bring easier or more docile conditions to the United States. By the end of May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported nearly 1,200 tornadoes in the United States for the year, making 2011 the deadliest year for these types of storms since 1953. Death tolls from these collective storms exceeded 500, with several billions of dollars in property damage.
Nowhere were the costs and consequences of these ferocious storms more evident than in the southern United States.
In late April, several dozen tornadoes emerged across a seven-state area, destroying everything in their paths. Government analysts and weather specialists found that in one day, more than 300 tornadoes struck in the southern United States, but it was Tuscaloosa, Ala., that bore the worst of the April fury. On April 27, Tuscaloosa, a city known more for college football and its fervent cheers for the Crimson Tide, was hit by a tornado that was at one point more than a mile wide. In the ensuing aftermath, the city’s mayor, Walt Maddox, described significant portions of his community as “obliterated.”
Joining federal, state, regional, and local emergency services in disaster response and recovery operations were fellow college football towns, including students and athletes. Fierce competition may be reserved for football fields on sunny fall afternoons, but compassion and help in hours of need knew no seasonal or geographic boundaries.
As the shocked nation marveled at the worst tornado season it had experienced in decades, blame was affixed to La Niña weather patterns for producing the deadly storms. The tornado season, though, extended another deadly month, and Joplin, Mo., ended up in the crosshairs.
FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate (second from left) and the Rev. David Myers (left), director of the DHS Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, meet with Dr. Kevin Ezell (second from right), president, Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, and an unidentified member of the Southern Baptist response team in Joplin, Mo. The group was meeting inside a Mobile Emergency Response Support vehicle, equipped with phone and video communications systems. FEMA photo
It was Sunday afternoon, May 22, when an EF5 tornado more than a mile wide tore through Joplin and surrounding communities, killing nearly 200 people and causing almost $3 billion in damage. The region’s American Red Cross chapter estimated that nearly 25 percent of the city had been destroyed by the storm.
Just as they had assembled weeks before in Alabama, federal, state, regional, and local emergency services descended upon the area in a coordinated response, bringing comfort and support where it was needed most.
At the same time that tornadoes were raging across the southern United States, the Midwest was dealing with rising floodwaters. With the Souris, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers all swelling beyond their banks, river towns such as Minot, N.D., Corning, Mo., lower Memphis, Tenn., and elsewhere literally found themselves physically joined by the waters.