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(birds chirping) (pensive music) - [Carol] May 16th, 2025, a date all too familiar with the St. Louis region.

In a matter of minutes, a quiet day turned violent: walls folded, trees twisted, and entire blocks of St. Louis were forever changed.

- Everything is gone.

- You lose a lot of like the power and things you worked really hard for in like a moment.

- At that time, I really, really thought that it was gonna be my last moment.

- You wanna make sure people physically safe, but mentally it does something to you also.

- Like these are family houses.

These are, like, there's stories attached.

Not just for like a year or two.

This is decades and decades worth of devastation.

- [Carol] Here's what we know about the EF3 tornado that ripped through our city.

Wind speeds reached 152 miles per hour.

The storm stayed on the ground for over 25 miles.

More than 5,000 homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Up to five people lost their lives.

Dozens were injured, thousands displaced, and the estimated damage, $1.6 billion.

These aren't just numbers.

These are lives interrupted, upended, and in many cases, left waiting: waiting for insurance, waiting for rebuilds, waiting to be heard.

Because after the debris is cleared and the headlines fade, the hardest questions remain: why did some neighborhoods get warnings and others did not?

What happens to renters, to elders, to families without coverage?

Are we building back stronger or just faster?

How do we ensure longtime residents can rebuild?

- For us, making sure the North Side stays whole and is able to equitably and responsibly be rebuilt, that will be the end.

We're in this for the long term and we won't step away.

We'll make sure our people are taken care of.

- What happens next and who gets to decide?

Welcome to the Nine PBS "Tornado Town Hall: Your Voice, Our Future."

I'm Carol Daniel.

This special is being filmed on the basketball court of the O'Fallon Recreation Complex and YMCA, which also became the People's Response Hub immediately following the May 16th tornado.

For tonight's program, we've gathered those affected by the deadly storm as well as recovery activists and St. Louis leaders.

We're meeting here tonight in the heart of the tornado's path, but not to come up with concrete solutions.

Clearly that could take years.

But we gather to grieve, to speak openly with each other, and to find hope in the aftermath of the deadly storm.

St. Louis' history is full of divides, but in times like this, we do believe it's essential that we see one another and try to come together.

Over 5,000 St. Louis homes and buildings were either damaged or destroyed by the May 16th tornado.

Linda Granberry-Shelton was inside her home that day and experienced the EF3 tornado firsthand.

In July on the sidewalk in front of her home, she shared her experience with me.

- I was sitting there in my family room when all of this heavy wind started.

Didn't hear any sirens or alarms or anything like that.

I was sitting there on my sofa when the front of my home collapsed.

(melancholic music) What I did was hollered out to my family members who were upstairs and in the kitchen, I hollered out to them to, "Let's get to the basement," because there was something happening.

And before we could go to the basement, the back of my home collapsed, and then the side of my home collapsed.

It was very, very frightening.

And we all gathered up in the front of the home on the north side, and then it happened so quickly.

There were people walking up and down the street hollering to see if anybody was in the home.

And right here to the north is where we got out.

But we were standing there waiting of someone to rescue us.

When we saw Ms. Deloris Holmes in this home across the street.

Her home collapsed on her and they had brought her out in the yard and was giving her CPR.

Deloris Holmes was so sweet.

Was always working in her yard.

(melancholic music) I have good days and I have bad days because it was very traumatic.

Someone broke into the home, they were living in my basement.

There were men clothing and shoes down there, had made a bed in one of my sofas.

I had four sofas down there, big pool table.

We did a lot of entertainment down there, and so where they tried to steal my washer and dryer, but they could not get it out, because I have a security door plus a old-style wash tub.

And then all the debris from the home had fallen behind there, and they couldn't get it up the steps 'cause they were too narrow.

I want to rebuild and I, you know, I put $100,000 in my home replacing 55 windows, all steel doors, brand new heating and cooling system.

I took pride in keeping my home beautiful, and that's what I worked 44 years for as a manager at AT&T.

I wanted to live here because I loved the Ville.

I love the Greater Ville.

It's a historic Black area.

And my oldest daughter attended Sumner High School and it's a historic Black high school.

And that's why I wanted to stay here in this neighborhood Board of Alderman, state representatives, the senators, FEMA, everybody, we need your help in North St. Louis.

Come over here, you'll see the damage, and how it has destroyed lives.

And me, I want to start over right here.

I wanna start over right here.

(suspenseful music) - Linda is with us tonight.

She always looks as fabulous every day.

Do not doubt it.

Linda, thank you so much for coming, and thank you for sharing your story with us.

Thank you, many audience members with us tonight are also survivors of the storm, or had their homes or property destroyed.

Paula Vickers came back from a vacation to find her North St. Louis home was hit by the tornado.

Paula, can you tell us how you found out that your home was destroyed and the experience you had when you first saw your house?

- Yeah, so I had the best day of my life in Italy.

Italy's about eight hours ahead.

So had made it on this trip that had been rescheduled, really, five years in the making from COVID to children, like all of these life happenings.

And so made it on this trip finally, had the best day ever.

Got back to my hotel.

Everyone that I know was like FaceTiming me, FaceTime audio, messaging me like, "Are you okay?"

So I'm like, "What has happened in St. Louis that people are concerned about me?"

I reached out to my aunt and she had basically told everyone to not tell me anything and she like put up a firewall between my friends and I, because she knew like there was nothing I could do.

So I had two more days in Italy really not knowing what had happened.

She said, "There was some damage to your house," and that was just it.

And she said, "I'm working on it."

I got back and the next day I went to my neighborhood and I couldn't drive down my neighborhood.

I had to block or park blocks away and walk into my neighborhood and someone had like told me to put on boots and I thought that that was like a ridiculous thing to say.

So I put on boots and I really didn't process like the enormity of a tornado hitting North City because this home has been in my family for 70 years.

It's housed four generations of my family.

Like I just feel like the neighborhood was untouchable.

And so when I got there, I literally became physically ill to the point that like I couldn't stand, I couldn't like even process what had happened.

Even talking to people today, they're like, "How are things and how's your house?"

And it's like, "Well, my house has been worked on but my neighborhood is gone."

So, like, how do you answer how you are when a piece of the puzzle is complete, but like the whole picture isn't there?

- And so, thank you so much, Paula.

Bettie Taylor is right next to you and her daycare was damaged in the tornado.

- I'm so grateful that I took shelter and got my children downstairs and as soon as I got the basement door closed, I knew something had happened really bad, but I didn't know what.

And I just think, I'ma just say, I think to praise God for those children and in my life.

I think to praised God because that building that fell over into my building, I believe that I tried to get that building down for years and I told them, I said, "You know what?

You really need to do something about this building because it's going to, if a strong wind come, it's gonna fall."

And never knowing that- - This would be the- - This would be the strong wind.

- Are you able to... Do you want to rebuild, is the question, and can you?

- I want to rebuild, and I am.

My insurance company is helping me to do that.

They've given me six to eight months, maybe, or more.

But they have been wonderful.

They are helping me to rebuild.

I'm grateful, I'm honored.

My parents are calling saying, "Oh, Miss Bettie, when are you going to open?"

I am one of the 24-hour daycares as well, so there aren't many of those in the city of St. Louis.

- [Carol] And they are necessary.

- They are very necessary.

- Thank you so much.

And you own a daycare, Cicely Hunter, who you may recognize her face.

She is a public historian with the Missouri Historical Society.

Bettie owns a daycare.

Cicely's twins were in their daycare.

And when that building was hit by a tornado, you've told me some weeks ago that they weren't physically injured, but your son had nightmares, and does he still have them?

Is he better now?

- I think he's better now, but I just, I didn't put the two and two together.

It took for me to have a conversation with my mom and she reminded me, "Cicely, you just came out of a tornado.

You don't know what those kids was going through."

And thankfully the daycare teacher told me that she actually was told to go in a certain area and she felt it in her spirit not to go into that area.

And thankfully she didn't because that's where the ceiling had actually caved in.

So I do give God glory for that, for sure.

- Mm-hmm, thank you.

(audience applauding) St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson is with us and I have interviewed him for 30 years about a variety of topics.

As I was navigating out of the tornado and seeing the smashed cars and the twisted buildings and the trees that didn't look like trees anymore, I've never seen so many firefighters and fire trucks in my life.

What was that day like for you?

And then we must talk about the siren issue.

What was the day like for you first?

- We knew that there was a possibility of impending storms.

When the tornado actually hit, we were already moving equipment around, if you will.

Everybody's talking about the ability to get into the neighborhoods.

That was the first priority of the fire department.

We couldn't get in either, so everything had to be cleared.

We had 50 recruits that were stationed at headquarters that were all moved up into the area.

We also called in five different heavy rescue task force teams to assist us and also called in the Missouri Task Force 1 out of Columbia.

So we put about 400 firefighters on that scene in under two hours and started our searches.

You have to remember, we lost two power substations in the area, which knocked out every bit of electric, including cell towers, communications, electric.

We had approximately 150 natural gas leaks from homes, which was a big concern.

That's a fire hazard.

We had multiple people stuck on elevators around the city with no electric.

So we spent time getting 40 some odd people out of different elevators across the city.

Did approximately 50 straight hours of search and rescue in buildings, 'cause trying to ascertain, is there somebody in the building, is there, you know, did everybody make it out, who's trapped?

And with the way these buildings came down, every building, every house that had collapsed had to be delayered and it had to be done in a way where we don't possibly injure somebody who's underneath the rubble- - Could be trapped.

Chief, with just a little time left, what can you tell us about the confusion between the City Emergency Management Agency and the St. Louis Fire Department, who was supposed to press the button?

- The statement of do you have the sirens wasn't communicated clearly.

You have to understand that the dispatchers were already receiving calls on issues that were coming up.

So they're picking up the phone and as they get a a statement from someone, it has to be clear, it has to be relayed definitively, activate the tornado sirens.

That's what we needed to hear.

- Let's move on.

Chief, thank you so much.

An honor to have you.

Gwen Moore is with us.

She is a curator at the Missouri Historical Society.

And as everyone in here knows, North St. Louis is filled with beautiful all-brick historic homes, and it is also filled with residents who have lived there and hung on, who want to live there.

Can you tell us about the historic disinvestment in North St. Louis?

And I say historic.

It feels recent, but it is 50 years or so.

But talk to us, Gwen.

- Well, I would say more than that.

I can go all the way back to right after the Civil War, but I know we can't go back that far.

But lemme see it's been official government policy to neglect Black communities.

We can go back to 1933.

I'll at least go back that far.

When we had the Homeowners Loan Corporation that set up those redlining maps where all Black neighborhoods were redlined, which meant that the government would not insure a mortgage even if they're, a middle-class Black neighborhood was redlined.

Rothstein has said that if even one Black person lived in a neighborhood, it was redlined.

So this was official government policy.

And then I'm just gonna go forward (chuckles) to 1975 with Team Four was a consulting firm, hired by the city of St. Louis to update the 1947 Comprehensive City Plan where they were going to rate neighborhoods.

A conservation neighborhood was a neighborhood, was fine.

Don't have to worry about it.

Redevelopment, the neighborhood was on the brink, but, you know, it could be saved.

And then it was the depletion neighborhoods, which meant that very little could be done to help that neighborhood.

Now they never used race, but they didn't have to.

It's the way they described the neighborhood: unemployed, elderly, welfare recipients.

And they said these neighborhoods, they didn't say don't give these neighborhoods any kind of resources, but they said, think about it.

Is it worth giving these neighborhoods these kind of resources?

And of course the answer was no.

Now the city said they never formally adopted Team Four, but they didn't have to.

All you have to do is look at North St. Louis.

I live in North St. Louis.

- And so (audience applauding) what is your level or lack of trust that city leaders in 2025 or staring at 2026 will take a hard left or hard right, and do something different than the history you've just described?

- Well, I really can't predict that.

Lemme just say I'm not necessarily optimistic because it's been neglected for so long.

It's been deprived of resources for so long.

I think the reason there was so much damage from that tornado is because of those decades and decades (audience applauding) of ignoring the Black community, of ignoring North St. Louis, of depriving it of resources.

Not giving it equal resources.

And I think there are larger questions involved here.

There's economic inequality and there's racial inequality.

And it's still, until we start dealing with those problems, we're always gonna have these kind of problems in our community.

- Gwen Moore, thank you.

(audience applauding) Thank you all so much for sharing your stories and your point of view.

While many St. Louisans were left in immediate need of shelter, of food and assistance following the tornado, even more St. Louisans stepped up to help.

STL Rebuild is one of the many organizations that emerged after the storm.

Calvin Motley shares his story.

- My name is Calvin Motley.

Of all my life, I've been fixing stuff, whether it was a house, the car, but it's, lately, it's been more houses.

We started STL Rebuild right after the tornado of May 16th.

The tornado hit and Mark Timmerman offered, said, "Do you need any help?"

I was like, "No."

A couple days later he said, "Well, what about your neighbors?

Do your neighbors need some help?"

I said, "Well, yeah, nobody else is doing any work.

So, yeah, and, you know, there's a lot of trees and stuff out, so, yeah, we need some help."

So he said, "Well, why don't we just raise some money to clean up North, your block?"

And I'm like, "Okay, yeah, let's try that, and see how that turns out."

And it turned out pretty well so far.

The day the tornado hit, I was working on his house.

I was at his house and I had no clue of what happened here that Friday.

I was numb.

When I first saw the destruction of the neighborhood, I was numb, just coming up here, I did not know what to expect.

There were trees, there were power lines, there were cars turned over, stuff on this side.

It was very, very bad.

I saw people whose roofs, just like the whole roof was sitting in the street or parts of their roof were sitting in the street, or parts of their houses had collapsed, and trees had fallen down.

But I was relieved when I got home and I saw it just blew off some of the roof covering.

With STL Rebuild, what I would like to accomplish is a better view out my window.

This is my neighbor's house.

We are going to finish putting this wall here, the chimney, and the rest of the parapet wall.

What we've been doing is actually whatever it needs to be done.

Some of the houses, the parapet wall, some of it collapsed.

A lot of chimneys collapsed.

The thing about the cleaning up is that without a sustained effort, it's just gonna get back like it was.

What we're gonna try and do is not just clean up just for now, we want to clean up so that a year from now, it won't be so bad when we have to do something.

No matter what, this is a long extended timeline, and it takes a lot of money and it takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of energy.

I get a lot of hope from the support I've received from the GoFundMe, from those people who respond to TikTok.

I get a lot of support from all over.

So that's what gives me the hope.

(mellow music) (audience applauding) - Well, Calvin Motley and Mark Timmerman are here in the audience tonight.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

And, Mark, I wanna give you a chance to speak as well.

He mentioned the long-term.

Mark, can you talk about how STL Rebuild is prepared for the long haul?

- Yes, you know, we've started a TikTok page and there's about 5,000 people who have been following along.

And a few weeks ago, Calvin asked on TikTok for content creator help.

And the response, I believe, there was over 150 people that just direct messaged and said they wanna help.

They're architects, they're campaign managers, they're builders, they're educators.

And so there's this huge community, which isn't surprising, of people who care about Calvin, who care about Penrose, care about North St. Louis, and wanna see people not just rebuild, but thrive in the future, which just has not been happening there.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you both for being here tonight.

So there are recovery activists, as I mentioned, that are with us tonight, including the People's Response, and members of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.

So I wanna go to Kayla Reed who is with us.

Co-founder and executive director of Action St. Louis.

So many questions and critiques raised about the City's response or, in the minds of many, or the lack thereof.

What did you feel was lacking then and now?

- A lot, so the tornado happened on Friday afternoon, so we sort of knew when, I was an hour away when I got home, that the weekend, government was not going to respond.

So part of when we arrived here, the night that the tornado happened and the next morning, we sort of assumed the People's Response was going to be a weekend effort to stand in the gap.

And that gap continued for weeks and months, and now it's been 90 days and there's still a gap in services reaching the people of North City.

And we saw fire trucks and tree trimmers and Forest Park on day one.

We saw the mayor in the Central West End shaking hands on day one.

What we did not see was prioritization of Zone C, which is this neighborhood, the Penrose neighborhood, the O'Fallon neighborhood, the Fairground neighborhood, Zone B, the Ville and Greater Ville.

They prioritized the zones A, B, and C, one, two, and three, important, less, and even less.

That's how we experienced the response.

That's how we continue to experience the response and the people have needs.

And I just wanna say that the people's response was one effort of many grassroots organizations that deployed against the wishes of this administration.

She loudly said, "Do not self-deploy."

And if we had not self-deployed, where would North City be 90 days later?

- And, Kayla, lemme be clear.

Lemme be clear.

Lemme get some clarity about that.

Are you saying that you were told by the administration- - In a press conference.

In a press conference, the mayor said, "We're asking people not to self-deploy."

There was a curfew implemented on the night of, so people were discouraged from trying to figure out how to assist each other.

We can call that safety, she's going to call that safety.

But what you discouraged was people doing the human thing and then what you didn't elevate, right?

It took her weeks to even acknowledge the YMCA, that thousands of people were mobilizing to support each other.

- Kayla, thank you.

- Ohun, I'm gonna come to you, but because of what you just said, we wanna go off-script, which I love to do anyway and give the mayor a chance to respond.

Mayor Cara Spencer is here.

A press conference, you say, "Don't self deploy."

Why did you say that and what did you mean?

- Well, first of all, you know, I wanna lift up the work that so many did right off the bat.

But, Kayla, we, our office, my team, the team of the City was doing our best to support the efforts.

You know, Dan Gunther and many others were out on a daily basis trying to help, but that doesn't change the reality that no matter how hard our team in the city was working, it wasn't enough.

It was so humbling to walk into an emergency management system that wasn't functioning well, that was breaking down.

We knew the sirens hadn't gone off.

We knew there were functional structural problems and deficiencies within the emergency management system.

We also knew we didn't have a federal government that was stepping up.

The night of the tornado, we were faced with miles of downed electrical lines.

We had gawkers from all over the region that were clogging up our streets, preventing our emergency management systems, our fire department, and our police officers from checking on families and making sure we were deploying lifesaving emergency management.

It was so humbling to ask folks, the gawkers, to stay home.

It was so enormously humbling that night to ask folks not to clog up the streets and not to put themselves and the community in danger by encountering those down electrical lines.

I dunno what we would have done as a community if the people's response and many others hadn't stepped up.

The work that you all did was truly lifesaving and transformed the community.

Yes, you all deserve a standing ovation every room you walk into.

(audience applauding) - [Carol] Thank you, Mayor.

- But, you know, I also just wanna say, Carol, to the City workers who were out that weekend who were working 12, 16 hour days, our emergency responders, our refuse department, our City staff that, you know, the assessor's office was out working 12, 16 hour days just to assess buildings to try and get FEMA and the federal response engaged, was truly heroic as well.

We know it wasn't enough and we know that our city needs partnerships with organizations like yours, with folks on the ground, with our state reps, with our elected officials, with our older persons across the board, with the folks that are doing the work on the ground every day beyond emergencies.

And it's our hope that through this work, over the years to come, that those relationships, that you all will be open to partnering with us, partnering with the City, and partnering beyond this emergency so that we can rebuild together.

- [Carol] Thank you, Ohun is the- thank you- founder of For the Culture.

Are you open to partnering?

- We've always been open to partnering because at the end of the day, it is not about one organization.

It's not about one mayoral administration, it's about the community.

And what I would like to say is it took you four days before you came to this Black hub where these Black people were who needed to hear from their mayor about what was coming, what resources they had to hear... And you came for a photo op.

You came for an opportunity.

You didn't come to hear from the community.

So to make it seem like we are always hard to work with or that because we call you out, that we are trying to be a problem, no, we're trying to have a solution.

The people that stepped up to do this are not disaster relief organizations.

We weren't sent in to do this.

We learned, because we knew that we had to.

I don't know, I don't know how you do these press conferences.

I don't know how you sit in front of these cameras and really feel good about what you say.

- Ohun, lemme ask this.

- I'm sorry.

- That's okay.

No, it is a judgment statement to say that you came for a photo op.

Why did you come that day?

- I don't know how to respond to that.

There were no photos even attempted.

That was not the reason we came.

We came to bring supplies, we brought flashlights, we brought water, we brought hope, and we brought wanting to work together.

And I saw very clearly that there was a working relationship between many members of City staff and the folks that were doing the hard work on the ground.

We came to say thank you.

I remain grateful and full of gratitude for that work because it was work the City wasn't equipped to do.

It was work that we still are not equipped to do, and we can't do this work in silos.

We have to work together.

That's very, very clear.

- I do hope that this conversation tonight is revealing.

A town hall should be revealing to everyone in attendance and that we walk out of here with renewed whatever that may be, renewed fill in the blank.

A renewed sense that I'm on the right path or a sense that I'm not.

A sense that there's somebody in the audience that I didn't know existed that I now need to work with.

Along with homes, many businesses in the St. Louis area are also facing a long road to recovery.

Delmar Boulevard, known for its art and food and history was devastated by the storm.

Felice McClendon is executive director of Delmar Main Street.

She describes her own experience and how people in businesses are trying to move forward after May 16th.

- Hi, my name is Felice McClendon and I'm the executive director for Delmar Main Street.

Eastgate all the way to Taylor is our footprint, which includes eight neighborhoods, 250 businesses and 36,959,000 people.

Specifically in the Delmar Maker District.

The part of Delmar that goes from Union to King's Highway, we had 12 new restaurants that had just opened in the last year.

So the impact of the tornado was absolutely devastating 'cause they had spent so much money and time just to have a launch of a building just to have to close.

Both personally and professionally, you know, I was impacted.

So I was in my car at the intersection of Delmar and Union.

This car is coming to me at like 40 miles an hour.

I'm honking like crazy, like, "Oh my God, don't hit me.

But the reason why is because trees were swirling around like toothpicks in the sky and that car was trying to dodge the trees.

At that point, tree hits my car, amongst other things.

I immediately feel cold and wetness.

And so I get down only for one window after another.

All of my windows exploded right over my head, just shattering: trees, debris, bricks, sticks, everything flying, literally hitting me.

So my body on this side was filled with glass shards, like you would have splinters.

So I looked okay, but the reality was I would get in bed at night and, you know, bloody up my sheets a bit because I was just full of splinters in my actual body that I could not, you know, I mean, I still have battle scars and glass that it will, the storm will forever be with me.

They say you can't serve from an empty cup.

So a long time ago I learned that it's important to HALT.

I don't know if you know the acronym, but never let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

And I've been all of the above (chuckles) for like a good 60 plus days.

What continues to get me up in the morning is knowing that there's somebody that has needs even greater than my own.

We do stop to just celebrate short wins and milestones, so for everyone that is able to open, you know, we come out and surround and celebrate those moments.

You know, even when we had the reopening for Steve's Hot Dog and The Fountain, I let this huge, I mean, we probably had close to 1,000 people that came for that one-night event.

But it was also like, this is one night and it's really great that everybody bought a hot dog tonight, but it could be crickets tomorrow, you know?

So what does it look like to support a small business after that?

And so right now it's really about helping people relocate.

And so with St. Louis having as much vacancy as it does have, there's not a small business that should be without a home.

So we're working really deep with partners to make sure that businesses can relocate so that they can get to making income as soon as possible.

And part of recovery does include preparation for when, not if this happens again.

(inspirational music) - Well, Felice is also here tonight.

And I saw you that afternoon on Delmar as I was trying to navigate out of the storm.

And I remember thinking, you were outside of your car, "Is that Felice?"

And you ran over to my car, I windowed down, we hugged, and I had to navigate out.

And we've never talked about- we've talked, but we have never talked about the emotion that either of us felt that day.

How have you helped yourself to heal from such a traumatic experience?

- Carol, I was just reaching back to hold my sister's leg behind me who has a story of her own, because we were talking about the mental health journey of it all.

Because someone can look okay, I can still find a nice dress in my closet and, you know, make myself feel a little bit better.

But the reality is, a friend took me out to go to eat, the waiter dropped the plate and I just bust out crying.

Now I looked fine, but he was like, "Are you okay?"

I was like, "Apparently not."

I think of Professor Norm White, God rest his soul.

But he used to talk about, and told a beautiful story about his grandmother's quilt.

And he would talk about the quilt, how the patches were different sizes.

You could have big urban league squares, you could have little bitty squares that you never heard of before, but you don't care.

When you need covering, you don't say I want that little square.

You want all of the whole covering, of all of us.

It takes all of us.

And this is the time.

We do not have time to be petty.

We do not have time to play politics.

I don't care what high school you went to.

I don't care who you like, who you don't like, who you voted for, who you didn't vote for.

I don't care if you voted at all.

At this time, everybody needs to be covered.

- Felice, thank you very much for all the work that you continue to do.

Joining us tonight are some St. Louis and Missouri leaders, including St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer.

We have already spoken to her, and Missouri Representative Wesley Bell.

We reached out to other US representatives and senators as well from Missouri, but they could not be here tonight.

So we're gonna start with who we do have, and we thank them again for being here.

Congressman Wesley Bell, I do want to start with you, and we'll get back to the mayor as well.

But talk to us about what you can do from a congressional seat when the Democrats are not in power in any chamber and Missouri is led by Republicans on the state level.

What can you possibly do to help North St. Louis?

- I remember when the biggest problems we had in 2025 were sinkholes.

And that seems so long ago, doesn't it?

I remember in March 14th when the storms hit in North County, I'm thinking, "Man, sinkholes, tornadoes, it cannot get any worse."

Until May came around and we saw what literally looked like a war zone in our city.

And I don't think that people understand the degree of devastation, certainly outside of this region that the storms had.

And I talked to people around the country, a lot of people didn't even know.

They just thought a storm hit us.

And so my approach has always been, I'ma get up and I'm gonna do my job and represent the people of this district, period.

I don't care if you supported me, didn't support me.

If you doing the work, you're gonna have my support, period.

And so when we look at how we move forward, I gotta let everybody know, the people in this room, the people in this region, that's all we got.

People around the country are not looking at and inquiring, "Oh, man, are you guys all right in St.

Louis?"

Most people don't even know.

And so when we look at the organizations on the ground, I don't care if governmental, grassroots, we gotta come together, because nobody else is coming to save us.

(audience applauding) - Thank you, thank you, I wanna go back to Mayor Spencer, because Kayla mentioned that, and a lot of us saw this, that the chainsaws, the trucks were out in Forest Park right away, and Forest Park is a multimillion dollar foundation.

They run their own, take care of that space themselves.

But how do you respond to the notion that the City did not get out and start clearing and it was people with their own chainsaw, like Farrakhan?

How do you explain that and help us to understand that?

- Well, it's both.

You know, I mean, I'm so proud of Casey Milberg, outta my office, who put together the emergency declaration within hours.

And we pulled in all city departments that night and made it very clear that we lifted all restrictions and we wanted each and every city worker from every single department out working as many hours, overtime as we could possibly muster.

And, you know, our City workforce is only about 66%.

We have about 30% vacancy, but the City workers we have, I can tell you, were working their tails off.

Our refuse workers were showing up every day at 05:00 AM to go out and do work outside of the refuse department.

We activated every single contract, standing contract, and maximized them all in the days to follow.

Our forestry clearance, we had a lot of contractors out there going through every neighborhood.

You know, we really empowered our City department leads to really direct where that went through.

The zones we established a couple months in to make sure we were go, or at least a month in to make sure that we were trying to triangulate all those things.

But our city workforce really worked as hard as they possibly can, and it is also not nearly enough.

Sitting down with FEMA, our state emergency management system, we know that the debris removal is hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions.

We're talking over 5, 6, $700 million to do the work we need to do just to get the debris out of our communities.

And that is why we are leaning in.

I have to say, Congressman Bell, you know, your work not only to push for getting FEMA here, while it is not making people whole, we know that they have still supplied over $30 million direct aid to get folks resettled.

We know that's not nearly enough.

When you're talking about $700 million just to get debris out, that doesn't even begin to start to rebuild.

- And, Mayor, lemme ask you too about that.

We know it's gonna, you're telling us it's expensive.

It has started, correct?

And respond to the feeling people had, may not be factual.

Please help us.

- Oh, look, the feelings that people have- - [Carol] That debris removal didn't start fast enough.

- The feelings people have are rooted in reality.

We know that the debris removal has not happened fast enough.

We know that.

We don't have the resources, we don't have the manpower within City Government to do that, Carol.

It is so humbling to look at our forestry department, after pulling weeks and weeks of 16-hour days and say, "It's not good enough, guys."

They know that they are already underpaid, they are already understaffed and they live in our community and they worked so hard and it's still not enough.

- Can we go to yet another tough topic?

And that is, as I mentioned to the chief, the tornado siren, that report at the time of this taping, on the 18th of August, came out today.

And I think you said in a statement that it was human failure.

You said the City was ill-equipped to handle the immediate aftermath.

Ill-equipped does not sound very positive from the mayor of a city.

- You know, our emergency management system, our CEMA, our office has been understaffed and under-resourced for many years.

There were also a cascading event of human failures that took place.

As the chief mentioned, the directive to the fire department wasn't clear.

Even if it had been clear, the button they had was malfunctioning.

Sirens across the city weren't working well or working at all.

There were failures throughout the system and it really points to not having decades, I mean, this didn't happen over the course of a couple months or years.

This was a decades of disinvestment in an emergency management system.

We're lucky now to have that report to be able to have a roadmap to really address and fix the issues.

And as mayor, I'm gonna say, the buck stops here.

The buck stops with me.

There were failures across the board and it is my responsibility and my pledge to fix them.

And that's what we're going to do moving forward.

But it is clear that it wasn't just a matter of failing to push the button.

We had an emergency operating procedure that hadn't been updated since 2003.

Our team had, when the tornado hit and we entered the emergency management office, it was clear that there was not an operating procedure or an operating model that was working.

It was a member of the mayor's office who was brought here by Bloomberg who picked up and held the 12-hour meetings on behalf of the City to organize this system to get us going in the right direction.

And Krizia Lopez did a phenomenal job setting that in motion, but the reality is there were failures, a cascading of failures across the board and the feelings people have that the City wasn't doing enough are absolutely rooted in reality.

I know that, and it is humbling.

And I also know our workforce was truly doing the best that they could do at the time.

We know that cities right now in this national environment are being, the emergency systems are being defunded.

FEMA, when it showed up, finally, the rules were changing underneath their feet on a daily basis.

The folks who were here helping us, who were doing a tremendous job trying to get people signed up, it wasn't their fault.

They were trying to help, but still, the federal rules were changing while they were here.

Whether or not they could knock doors and get people signed up, those rules changed while they were here, while we were relying on the folks on the national level to help us.

Our country is faced with so many major questions, one of which is are we gonna shove emergency management entirely on cities and states?

Are we equipped as a city to even begin to shoulder that?

And if this president and this administration at the national level is going to start burdening cities and states with that, we have to be at least aware of that so we can start to prepare.

We were so under-prepared for a FEMA that was pulling out the rug, not only just out underneath us, but underneath its own workforce, its own workers, who were dedicated professionals who chose careers in emergency management, who truly, those of you who interacted with FEMA, for the most part, we heard overwhelmingly positive reviews of the folks on the ground who were working to get folks signed up.

They were working so hard and with such heart and still the federal government was changing the rules of their own jobs as they were here.

It was truly, truly a grilling experience.

The feelings of inadequacy, of inadequate response on the city, state, and federal level are rooted in true-lived experience.

And we know that.

And it is our job as a city, as the congressman pointed out, we are here and we are going to do our best to fill in the gaps.

And we are your neighbors and we are, this is our community and we are going to do the best that we can to do that- - I do want to go to Julian, who is sitting next to you.

Julian Nicks is the, long title, chief recovery and neighborhood transformation officer for the City of St. Louis.

A newly created position.

And because it's new, we don't know what you do, Julian.

So tell us what your goals are, what your objectives are in this office.

- Yeah, so there's a couple.

I think one of them, and I think the group hit it well, is actually thinking about how does the City start to rebuild and restore after this strong period?

And how do we actually engage broader community in setting the vision of what that looks like?

So I think one of them is actually trying to set a community-centric vision for where we go from here.

And I think the group hit it well, is that we're talking about decades of disinvestment.

So we're not just talking about a tornado that hit an area.

We're talking about a tornado that hit, as a disaster, well after multiple disasters, which makes the trauma and difficulty of this recovery much more difficult.

So I think one of them is figuring out where do we go from here and charting a path?

I think Mayor Spencer, when she created the recovery office, there was two goals.

One, we recognized that this rebuild effort and this recovery effort is gonna take well beyond just the immediate.

We recognize that we still have to run the rest of the city and we have to stay focused on this core topic.

So one was we wanted people, including my office, the people in my office, to hold what the residents are holding, that wake up every day thinking about how we recover.

And so when we think about the different functions that's within that, there's a lot of different areas in the City that we're organizing and bringing cross-city departments as well as working with other nonprofit partners to figure out.

One of them is how do we support residents through this continued transition?

This is not, as people mentioned right now, it's the immediate response, long term.

There's so much longer needs that people are gonna have as we look at this recovery effort.

So how do we support and create that broader ecosystem, is the core goal.

How do we remove the debris out of the neighborhood and reinvest in the infrastructure like sidewalks and tree canopy long term?

How do we restore and rebuild housing?

We lost a large amount of housing stock from that reinvestment.

That's gonna take a while.

So that's one of the core areas of focus.

And then how do we also accelerate the development process?

We know from a city that the process to build in the city has already been cumbersome.

We know developers have told us that this made it difficult to invest.

And when you add in the disinvestment, when you add in the redlining that has undervalued these properties, borrowing against land value, having an insurance policy that pay out don't exist, so how do we start to accelerate processes to help in this effort?

And then the last, and I think they hit on it well too, is how do we help the small business and nonprofits recover in this?

And so it's really holding all five of those core facets and figuring out how we move forward from here.

- Julian, do you have a stated objective to hold the line on gentrification?

- So we have- - And we wanna be clear.

I said this to someone today.

I said this to someone today, and they said to me that there may be African Americans who wanna own a Starbucks.

There may be African Americans who want to establish a beautiful new structure, whether it's a home or a business.

But the core meaning of gentrification is poor Black people, poor people are moved out and wealthy developers move in.

That's the gentrification I am talking about.

And so where does the office fall in that?

- Yeah, and I think Mayor Spencer said this at the very beginning.

Our goal is to keep people in their neighborhoods and try to help them restore and rebuild.

That is a top and priority objective that was stated by Mayor Spencer very early into the tornado and remains a guiding principal tied to recovery office.

- Joining us now is a sociology professor at St. Louis University, Dr. Ness Sandavol.

Thank you so much for being here.

I know of two families, one is a renter and one is a homeowner, who've already moved out of the city.

Do they come back?

They are not sure, even if they can.

Linda, our earlier guest, said she intends to rebuild.

Can you estimate for us the damage that the tornado has done, not just physically, but to the St. Louis population?

- Absolutely, so what we know is about 14 neighborhoods were impacted, census tracts were impacted by the tornado.

In those census tracts, about 28,000, there are about 28,000 residents.

And so we know a lot of themes that have talked about, natural disasters do not change patterns, they just accelerate patterns that are already in place.

And so there was already demographic loss happening.

And so what will happen is we will see an acceleration of demographic loss, and it's gonna be in particular cohorts of households, particularly families with children.

So in those 14, in those 14 census tracts, there are 2,500 households with children.

So we're gonna see a loss and, but when you lose a household with children, you don't lose one person.

You lose four to seven to eight people.

And so the City's doing a very good job at building homes for non-family households, but that's typically one, two people.

The reason why the population's declining in the city is that it's losing its families with children.

It's losing its children.

And so the City has to make families with children a priority.

And so when it rebuilds these neighborhoods, families and children have to be at the core of the foundation of building these neighborhoods up again.

And so we have an estimate of the demographic shock of 3,500 residents that will leave.

But then there's the aftershock, and many people have talked about the aftershock.

And the aftershock is about the perception, about hopelessness that their city will not be rebuilt.

And if those aftershocks are large, then the 3,500 I'm talking about probably is gonna be closer to 7,000 people who leave.

And so we don't know what the aftershock is, but the aftershock we have to, we have pretty good data coming out every six months or so.

The City has to manage those aftershocks and show hope that these neighborhoods will be rebuilt and they're rebuilt with families with children.

- I always say when talking about population loss, that we focus on St. Louis City's population loss, but we are a region and the region is not growing.

- Yes.

- As much as I love St. Charles, as much as I love St. Peter's, this region isn't growing.

So it's not just that the City of St. Louis might be losing population.

We as a region are.

- And I've made this point before.

The region will not start, will not grow until St. Louis City starts to grow again.

And so the region has- - Go to Jeff City, Ness.

- The region has responsibility to respond to tornado if they want to see the city grow.

If they want growth in the suburbs, St. Louis City has to start experiencing growth.

If St. Louis City continues to decline, St. Charles, Chesterfield will see the population decline.

It's that simple.

- Okay, what a night, what a conversation.

There is so much more to be said and so much more work to done.

We at Nine PBS want to thank you so much for coming out.

To our activists, to those who experienced it firsthand and are continuing to heal, to those helping business owners, to our elected officials, we thank you all for coming this evening.

Thank you for joining us for Nine PBS's "Tornado Town Hall: Your voice, Our Future."

I'm Carol Daniel.

Have a great night.

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