(upbeat music) - [Jim] We head to the Total Eclipse Crossroads in southeast Missouri.

How what happened in 2017 is helping towns like Perryville get ready for 2024, and the planning is already underway.

- Estimates of visitors coming on any given eclipse is a lot like the weather.

You just don't know until it happens.

- [Jim] Looking back to 1925, and a terrible deadly day for Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana.

That's why it came to be called the Tri-State Tornado.

- All said and done, it was a 219 mile track.

- We look in on a local program that takes some study, work, but can lead to steady work.

- Next to every outstanding pharmacist, there's an outstanding pharmacy technician.

- [Jim] It's all next on "Living St. Louis".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - I'm Brooke Butler, and we've got stories about the wonders of nature.

One you hope to never experience firsthand and the other might be a once in a lifetime experience, or if you're lucky, twice.

And for that, we start with a road trip.

- I'm Jim Kirchherr in Perryville, Missouri on a nice sunny day.

Just the kind of day a lot of people are hoping they're going to have on April 8th of 2024 because Perryville, Missouri is going to be one of the best places to see the total solar eclipse.

You remember these?

Well, so do they.

A building on Main street houses the American Tractor Museum and the Perry County Tourism Offices.

- Welcome everybody.

Thank you so much for coming.

This is our first task force meeting.

- [Jim] Next year's Eclipse will bring a lot of visitors to Perry County and February of this year was not too early to start getting ready.

- Today, states, cities, and towns across the 2024 path are preparing for the eclipse like Perry County did in 2017.

- [Jim] Trish Erzeld is not just Perry County's tourism director, she is also chair of the Missouri Eclipse Task Force.

- And then here's our closeup of what Missouri looks like.

- [Jim] Perryville is in the eclipse crossroads.

It's one of the few places in the country that was in the path of totality in August of 2017 and will be again in April of 2024 along with Cape Gerardo and Farmington, Missouri, Carbondale and Harrisburg, Illinois.

In the first so-called great American eclipse, nobody really knew what to expect.

- We feel like we've kind of been around the block once now.

So we are kind of going by the same game plan as we had last year or in 2017 because it worked out really well for us.

So we created SolarFest with Science Boost, a parade, games, and a carnival.

It was very inspiring to see all the people that came.

We had 36 states and 16 countries represented here, but it wasn't such an overwhelming amount of people that we weren't able to handle those that came to visit us.

So it made it very enjoyable for our residents and also our visitors.

- Who will position fire personnel to assist the medics.

- Liz, Health Department.

We're gonna be looking at food trucks.

- [Jim] This was a gathering of Perry County folks who have to get ready.

Police, fire, traffic, schools, health department, they all have things to worry about.

But there is a difference.

In 2017, St. Louis was just on the edge of totality and some 10,000 people only had to go to Jefferson Barracks to experience that incredible moment.

But St. Louis is only going to get a partial eclipse next year.

The southeast corner of the state is going to be the only place in Missouri to see totality again.

- Looks like we should crack more St. Louis people.

Have you thought about that?

- Right, right.

- We think it's a great opportunity to really promote this part of our state.

- [Jim] That's Don Thicken of the St. Louis Astronomical Society.

- We'll be really encouraging folks to come down to this area to really experience the totality, and frankly, it's just a short drive.

We'll certainly be monitoring the traffic.

- [Jim] This kind of planning is going on across much of the country, but only a few towns have been through it so recently.

And so places like Perryville and Carbondale, they're a big part of the National Eclipse Task Force.

- That's one of the things that the National Task Force is doing is trying to make those connections between places like Perryville, Carbondale, the places that got to see 2017 and will see 2024.

- [Jim] Former Mizzou professor astrophysicist Angela Speck, who's now in Texas is National Task Force co-chair.

Before the 2017 eclipse, she was crisscrossing Missouri helping cities and towns like Pacific get ready for the big event.

- So it's really getting everybody ready, both from a pragmatic, how busy is it gonna be, point of view and wow, this is amazing, what is this point of view.

- [Jim] And there is sort of a sneak preview this year.

In October, some folks in the southwest will see an annular eclipse when the moon isn't quite big enough to block out the sun entirely.

And we'll see maybe 50% of the sun blocked.

And then next April, if you don't travel to totality, the St. Louis area will be able to see but a sliver of the sun blocked.

- But it's really cool to see that bite out of the sun as the moon is moving in the way.

So those glasses that you have that you wear in the runoff to a total, it's the same sort of thing.

You're just not gonna get to the full thing.

- You're still excited about this stuff, aren't you?

- Of course I am.

- [Jim] But in Perryville, in other towns in the path of totality, that excitement is mixed with a lot of work and preparation.

- I think it's gonna be bigger than last time.

- I think it'll be too.

So I say that the estimates of visitors coming on any given eclipse is a lot like the weather.

You just don't know until it happens.

- [Jim] Worst case scenario, think April showers.

Best case, a cloudless sky with totality this time more than a minute longer than in 2017.

- Looking forward to some of the same folks that were here in 2017 to come back in 2024 and visit us along with new friends.

- [Jim] The eclipse crowd is a pretty good crowd.

- [Trish] They're wonderful people.

They are wonderful people.

- This next story by Veronica Mohesky is about something that happened a long time ago, and it would be nice to say it couldn't happen again, but we know better.

(upbeat music) - [Veronica] The morning of March 18th, 1925 was like any other for the small town of Murphysboro, Illinois.

But by the end of the day, the deadliest tornado ever recorded in US history would destroy it, leaving 234 people dead.

The devastating twister, known as the Tri-State Tornado, began in Missouri around 1:00 PM.

- So we know that this tornado started somewhere near Ellington, Missouri, that's in southeast Missouri.

And it quickly raced northeast through basically the entire state of Illinois from west to east.

And it lifted somewhere in Indiana.

All said and done, it was a 219 mile track.

- [Veronica] That's Kevin Deitsch.

He's a warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

He says the tornado still holds records for the longest path and duration.

- The duration of the tornado is actually three and a half hours long.

You think of a typical tornado that we would see one, five, maybe 10 minutes is kind of the more usual timeframe.

So for a tornado to be on the ground for three and a half hours, this just shows the power that this tornado had.

- [Veronica] The tornado is estimated to have been around three quarters of a mile wide.

So this stock footage of smaller tornadoes can't do it justice.

No known photos or videos of the storm exist.

The Tri-State Tornado began by destroying the town of Annapolis, Missouri and several others, leaving at least a dozen dead.

Christopher Allen Gordon, the director of Library and Collections at the Missouri Historical Society, says the storm then went over state lines.

- And as it was moving, it seems to have built in intensity.

- The tornado then reached Murphysboro, Illinois, which Gordon says was absolutely devastated.

- One of the really interesting accounts that we have of the tornado coming into Murphysboro is actually a railroad engineer entering the city as the tornado is actually hitting Murphysboro.

And he describes seeing the town just disintegrating as he's coming into town.

And he said the wind and being pelted from this debris is actually shaking the train.

And they decide to just go ahead and just plow through the debris trying to get to downtown Murphysboro.

And it comes to a stop at the station, and he said "there's bodies lying in the street.

The houses and buildings are just totally collapsed".

- [Veronica] The storm left over 200 people dead and a fire in its wake.

But the tornado wasn't even close to being done.

It continued to move east through De Soto, Illinois.

- De Soto sadly holds the record of having the most student casualties in American history.

So 33 students died when the tornado directly hit their school in the middle afternoon.

- [Veronica] It then entered West Frankfurt, Illinois.

- West Frankfurt at the time was a mining town.

They had coal mines.

Most of the men were at work that day underground.

And they come out and they find that their town is just absolutely devastated.

And their families, many of them lost their families.

And so it's just one case after another of this devastation as it's moving across Illinois.

- [Veronica] Finally, after three and a half hours, the tornado gave out near Princeton, Indiana.

- So this is the deadliest tornado that we have on record, 695 deaths and actually 2,027 injuries.

So just a devastating tornado.

- [Veronica] Deitsch says the storm was formed in a supercell, which is what gave it so much power.

- A supercell is basically the whole thunderstorm itself is rotating.

And so out of supercell thunderstorms, we tend to get our worst weather.

- [Veronica] With over 300 mile per hour winds, it is considered an F5 tornado.

And while tornadoes like this still happen today, our warning systems are much better now than in 1925.

- So there weren't warning systems in place in 1925, people relied on their own sense of really how to read the weather.

They really had no really accurate models for predicting what the weather was going to be like, and certainly not these storm systems.

- [Veronica] Buildings today are also much safer.

And many homes in the Midwest have basements or storm shelters.

- These homes were not constructed really in a manner that could hold up against such intense winds.

So if it was enough to shake a a steam engine while it's going down the railroad tracks, a wood frame home, even a brick home would not have had a chance.

- [Veronica] And though many Midwesterners like to step outside when there's a tornado warning, Gordon says we shouldn't take them lightly.

- We kind of take the weather system warnings for granted nowadays.

And I don't think that we should, you should always be aware of what the conditions are because as we've seen in the past, the circumstances, the consequences can be devastating.

(dramatic music) - And joining us is 5 On Your Side chief meteorologist Scott Connell.

We don't usually have a weather segment, Scott, but today, in this time of year, I think it's a good time to talk about this.

You're on the front lines of not just weather forecasting, but putting out warnings and watches.

You don't go back to 1925, but you've been in town doing this for quite some time.

- Over 30 years.

And we've seen tornadoes in that time even hit in the metropolitan area.

You look back at the Good Friday tornado that hit in Bridgeton and went through the airport, through North County, across the river in Illinois, that was an EF4 in Bridgeton, at the airport, the damage was EF2.

But it just goes to prove St. Louis is not immune from seeing a large damaging tornado.

They can and probably will happen again in the metro area.

- We think of the spring as severe weather season, tornado season.

It's not wrong, but it's also not quite right, is it?

- We get our peak in April and May.

That's when most of our tornadoes historically have happened.

But you also look January 31st, we had the big tornado down in southwest St. Louis County.

That was a bad tornado.

You've had tornadoes in February, you've had tornadoes in January, and they've been intense, very large tornadoes.

And just thinking about 2021 in December when we had the Amazon warehouse and we had Defiance and also the tornado, the Quad-State Tornado as it's been called, nearly challenged the Tri-State Tornado as the longest on record.

It was thought it might have been the longest track on record, but we didn't get continuous damage, so it didn't make it.

- So we watch TV and all the stations are doing this and all the stations I think except for us have a weather department because this is important work, it's steady work, people tune to you to find out what's going on.

But let's go back 30 years.

How much better are you guys now, and I don't mean just you guys, but the technology, how much better is it now than it was when you first got into the business?

- When I first started, you would get radar, but you had to actually go to the phone, dial it up to get your image, and we'd have to dial in to get things on the modem.

Think about computers, the very first stages of computers and how slow it was to get that information.

The old dot matrix printers, things were transmitted, we got the information, but it wasn't nearly as fast as it is now.

Add to that, the advances in radar technology.

So Doppler radar, they were deployed, it's the WSR, Weather Surveillance Radar 88, that's technically the next name.

So 1988 is when it really started being deployed, in St. Louis, I think ours was commissioned at the Weather Service office in 1991.

And if you look at the tornado history across the country and the number of tornadoes historically recorded, you see that there's a fairly flat line here going before 1991, and then it jumps up.

And part of the reason that it jumps up, there's a couple of them, but one of the reasons is the Doppler radars were better able to detect that rotation because now for the first time, we can actually see how the raindrops are moving.

And that's an indication of the wind and where that dangerous twisting is.

And so now you have people that are actually pinpointing where these are and you know where to go to look for damage.

- I think that's what I've noticed is the ability for you guys to circle the hook, right?

And also then say, five minutes till this town, eight minutes till this town, 10 minutes till this town.

But you can't tell me the day before.

- You can tell the day before where the conditions are favorable.

And that also comes into play when the National Weather Service meteorologists are issuing warnings.

Because if you have an environment, if all the atmospheric conditions, think of it as a recipe when you're cooking, you have ingredients to go into a recipe.

If all those ingredients are there and you follow the instructions, put it in the oven, bring it out, it makes what you expect it to make, whatever that is.

When we're looking for weather, we're trying to see what all the ingredients are going to be, how they're going to interact.

We can see that they're coming together and in general proximity.

But whether they're going to actually come together in any specific storm, you really don't know until that storm gets going.

And what the weather service will do a lot of times when they start seeing circulations developing on the radar screen, if that environment is favorable and it looks like all the ingredients are there, then they know that storm is most likely going to become even more intense and they're more confident in issuing a tornado warning and certainly a severe thunderstorm warning to at least get the heads up and get that message out.

Being in Missouri, for those that live in Missouri, it's the Show Me state.

So there's that tendency to, well, show me, I want to see it.

- That's the other thing is with all this technology and the same way I was thinking is sort of like medical technology, being able to detect so many things that might be wrong that maybe you have to follow up.

There's this idea that, you know, I'll admit I hear the siren and I think, well that's for the whole county.

So let me go out and look.

Is it our part of the county?

So is there a problem you think, or perhaps a challenge getting to put out the right number of warnings and to get people to not ignore, oh, it's just another warning.

- I think the one thing we all need to be is weather aware.

When those ingredients, when we can see a day, two, three days ahead, hey, things are coming together where there may be storms.

So on those days you want to have it in your mind that something may happen and you want to kind of stay in tune with what's going on.

For most folks, you've got apps on your phones, you have the government alerts.

So if you're in the polygon and a tornado warning is issued, your phone's going to go off.

Now just a couple of weeks ago, we had storms roll through the bi-state area and there were a couple of tornado warnings.

They were not those supercell big storms.

It was a line.

And we see embedded little circulations along that line and they tend to produce quick spin up tornadoes.

So the tornado warnings were pretty small, but like you say, all of St. Charles County sirens went off when it was only a small part of the county that might be impacted.

But that's your cue to find out what's going on.

Check in on TV, is your radio on, do you have radar, just staying informed.

- And don't go outside and look for it.

- Well one thing if it's sunny right where you are, you've got storm chasers too.

The other thing that's helped with the number of tornadoes being reported is now we have hundreds of people that years ago we wouldn't know a tornado touched down in a field in the middle of Kansas, now there's 15 people with cameras, honed in on that storm.

- So it's still important to have people out there eyeballing this, right?

- And we have storm spotters throughout the St. Louis area, we have our weather watchers and they're very vital.

The HAM radio operators have been around for a long time, very vital in getting that information to us.

And we're all interconnected, emergency management, the National Weather Service, all of the media partners.

We make one big team trying to keep people safe.

We're all tied in together on what we call NWS Chat, which allows us to stay in constant realtime communication with each other as to what's going on.

- We're gonna continue to take this seriously.

Thanks for joining us, Scott Connell from 5 On Your Side, and again, steady work.

I hope we have a safe spring this year.

- Stay alert.

- Well those of us who are in TV by the way, are well aware of how many people are involved in what we do.

Just look at the credits at the end of the show.

But there are a lot of vital jobs where the people don't really get any credit and not the credit they deserve.

And as part of our ongoing efforts looking at jobs that require training, but not necessarily a four year degree, Brooke Butler looks at a partnership that might just be dispensing the cure for one of our worker shortages.

- [Narrator] The science of preparing and dispensing these medicines and drugs is called pharmacy.

And the key figure in this profession is the highly trained registered pharmacist.

He may be the man working diligently.

- [Brooke] Okay, so a couple of things.

First, women can obviously be pharmacists too.

Something not as common when this film was produced in 1946.

Second, some would argue that the key figure in preparing medicines is not in fact the pharmacist, but the pharmacy technicians.

- Next to every outstanding pharmacist, there's an outstanding pharmacy technician.

The pharmacy technicians have a unique skill and ability to get patient care delivered every single day.

- [Brooke] So how many of these do you do a day?

- I make about, you can make up to 150, 200.

It's fun.

- [Brooke] It's fun.

- It's really fun because you're helping a patient.

- [Brooke] Malinda works as a pharmacy technician at Memorial Hospital in Belleville, but out of patient privacy and sanitary precautions, we opted to show how Malinda does her job at southwestern Illinois College's pharmacy lab, which was where Malinda received her certification.

- I wanted to go to the nursing program at SWIC.

However, after working in the hospital and watching what the nurses do, I didn't wanna become a nurse anymore because I don't wanna have to have direct care with patients.

So in the pharmacy, I really can still help the patients.

I'm just not direct care.

- [Brooke] Prior to starting the program at SWIC, Malinda was already working as a pharmacy technician.

But while you can start the job without any special credentials, training and certification is required within the first two years of employment.

Of course, rules and regulations change from state to state, but Illinois is anticipating that in 2024, all technicians will be required to take a class and pass the pharmacy technician certification exam before becoming eligible for employment.

This doesn't seem to be the case for Missouri quite yet, but the benefit of having this certification is the ability to work in any state and more potential for career advancement.

Not to mention a deeper understanding of the work.

- Last night's homework assignment was the drip rates and flow rates.

All quiet.

I'm assuming it wasn't an issue.

All right, let's do it then.

Let's go to number one.

- [Brooke] The pharmacy tech program at SWIC is the first in the St. Louis region that has been certified by the American Society of Health System Pharmacist, which according to Dr. Ryan Birk, who started the program.

- That's a big deal because it provides high quality education at an affordable cost.

- [Brooke] It's also a big deal given that the program has only been around since 2021.

Dr. Birk saw the need for the program and preparation for the new Illinois training requirements, and no shocker here, the desperate need for more healthcare workers.

- So we have a shortage of technicians.

We also have medication shortages, which requires more manipulation and more labor, more technicians to do that work.

And that shortage of technicians, I felt was from not having enough exposure for individuals coming out of high school or the community in general, this is an access point to a career in healthcare.

- [Brooke] Depending on the setting, technicians can play various roles within pharmacies.

So there are the drug stores which are pretty straightforward in assisting the pharmacist in filling prescriptions.

But in a hospital, there are expanded opportunities such as the ordering of drugs, medicine recommendations for patients, and a newer practice called drug diversion, which is the effort to reduce the illegal distribution and abuse of prescription drugs.

- And so those are expanded roles that we're really excited about that we continue to have the SWIC program develop individuals and get exposure to that and then we develop them from that on.

- [Brooke] And in cases like Malinda, where she was already working at Memorial Hospital, she qualified for the apprenticeship program.

So they not only covered the tuition, but she was compensated for her time.

So you were paid to go to school?

I mean that's the dream, right?

So no student debt.

- No.

- [Brooke] And now you're working full-time.

- In the program so far we've had every type of student.

We have had some 17 year olds come and then I also had a 50 year old student and I've also had a 63 year old student who just finished in December.

- [Brooke] Melissa Epps is SWIC's pharmacy technician program coordinator and has been a practicing registered pharmacist for the past 25 years.

- There is tremendous changes, especially when it comes to the use of pharmacy technicians.

Before I went to pharmacy school, I was a pharmacy technician and basically we just answered the phone and helped with the pharmacist, like counting the medication and entering into the computer.

But now pharmacy role has greatly increased for pharmacy technicians and also with COVID, technicians became certified vaccinators.

- [Brooke] Another change that Melissa has seen, salary increases, and as job vacancies continue to grow, she expects the pay rates will increase as well.

- All those instructors with the program are very dedicated to helping the students pass the program.

And that's one thing that's very unique about going to a program at a community college because you have all these resources to help you be successful.

- Pharmacy technicians are essential to the healthcare that we have in this country.

I think they're the unsung hero many times.

They work side by side by pharmacists to just take care of patients.

And I think it's a wonderful career and I hope more people look into it.

- And that's "Living St. Louis".

You can find more information about our Pathways to Work initiative on our website.

And don't forget to send us worth thoughts and suggestions by following us on our social platforms or at ninepbs.org/lsl.

I'm Brooke Butler.

Thanks for joining us.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.