The local chapter of the American Red Cross will send two workers to help with relief efforts in tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo.
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The American Red Cross Pioneer Valley Chapter on Tuesday will deploy a local volunteer and reassign a fieldworker to help with tornado relief efforts in Missouri, according to a statement from the Springfield-based chapter.
Belchertown resident Stephanie Bozigian-Merrick is headed for hard-hit Joplin, Mo., where 116 people were killed and more are feared dead after a twister cut an apocalyptic path of destruction through the small Midwestern city on Sunday.
The tornado's nearly 200-mph winds leveled much of Joplin's south side, crushed cars and churches and left schools, businesses and homes in ruins. Monday's search-and-rescue efforts were hampered by thunderstorms accompanied by strong winds, heavy rain and hail and threat of more tornadoes.
Warren resident Donna McKinney will join Bozigian-Merrick in Joplin, according to Dawn Leaks, assistant director of chapter support for the local branch of the American Red Cross.
McKinney will assist with relief efforts and Bozigian-Merrick will serve as a nurse, according to Leaks. McKinney recently was deployed to Baton Rouge, La., but she will abandon that post and travel by van with other Red Cross volunteers to Joplin, Leaks said.
The national relief organization opened a shelter in Joplin shortly after the tornado struck on Sunday. That shelter, located at Missouri Southern State University with accommodation for up to 1,000 people, had approximately 110 people staying there by Sunday night.
The twister that hit Joplin was one of dozens reported across seven Midwest states over the weekend. One person was killed in Kansas and another in Minneapolis, the latter of which also now has a Red Cross shelter.
But Joplin, population 50,000, bore the brunt of the region's devastation after a half-mile-wide tornado wiped out this blue-collar city about 160 miles south of Kansas City.
Last month, a ferocious pack of twisters roared across six Southern states, killing more than 300 people -- more than two-thirds of them in Alabama. As in the Midwest, though, the Southerners also had warning, but those storms were too wide and too powerful to escape, obliterating towns from Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Bristol, Va.
The National Weather Service (NWS) characterized Sunday's turbulent Midwestern weather as the deadliest tornado outbreak since April 1974. Forecasters are predicting the severe weather will persist for the remainder of the week, with a possibility of tornadoes popping up Tuesday in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. The turbulent weather could reach the East Coast by Friday, the NWS said.
Leaks said the Red Cross is moving large amounts of relief supplies to Joplin and other affected areas in that region. The relief organization also will deploy additional staff, particularly those who are trained medical and mental health workers.
Elsewhere in the nation, Red Cross relief operations continue across the South in response to last month's tornadoes and ongoing flooding along the Mississippi River. Since March 31, Red Cross disaster workers have provided thousands of people with overnight shelter, distributed thousands of cleanup and comfort kits, and served more than 1.8 million meals and snacks, according to Leaks.
The Pioneer Valley Chapter has deployed a total of eight local volunteers to assist with various relief efforts, including Tim Van Cleef of Amherst, who recently returned from a deployment to North Carolina as a technology support assistant; Ellen Patashnick of Springfield, a relief worker in Mississippi; Dorrie Durand of Holyoke, a casework supervisor in Alabama; Vicki Edwards of Agawam, a casework assistant in Mississippi; Bill Pryne of East Longmeadow, a nurse supervisor in Illinois; and Gerri Sexton-Jones of Springfield, who assisted victims in Tennessee.
"Our local volunteers join thousands of their colleagues from across the country to provide help and hope to the victims of these tragic spring storms," Leaks said in a statement.
Back in Missouri, meanwhile, the difficult task of identifying the dead is under way.
Jasper County Coroner Rod Chappel said a portable morgue en route from Texas was expected to arrive late Monday, according to the Joplin Globe newspaper. The morgue will be staffed by people who will use "visuals, DNA, dental records and X-rays to identify the deceased," Chappel told the newspaper for its Tuesday edition.
"We will compare what we find in the forensics with what we get from family members to individually ID the bodies," Chappel said, adding that the process could take several hours for each body.
The next of kin will then be notified and the bodies will be released to mortuaries, he said.
Officials said the tornado was the single worst twister in nearly 60 years and the second major tornado disaster in less than a month. Authorities predict the death the toll to rise as the full scope of the destruction comes into view, according to the Associated Press.
Images of post-tornado Joplin on Monday revealed a disaster of nearly apocalyptic proportions: house after house reduced to splinters, cars crushed like aluminum cans, and shaken residents roaming streets in search of missing family members.
Adding to the danger, fires from gas leaks continued to burn across Joplin on Monday as more violent weather loomed on the horizon, including the threat of hail, high winds and pssibly more tornadoes. By daybreak Monday, the city's south side emerged from darkness as a barren, smoky wasteland.
"I've never seen such devastation -- just block upon block upon block of homes just completely gone," former state legislator Gary Burton, who showed up to help at a volunteer center at Missouri Southern State University, told The Associated Press.
Unlike the multiple storms that killed more than 300 people last month across the South, Joplin was smashed by just one exceptionally powerful tornado. The last time a single twister wrought this much devastation was in June 1953, when a tornado hit Flint, Mich., also killing 116, according to the NWS.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon told the AP he did not want to guess how high the death toll could climb, but added, "Clearly, it's on its way up."
Hope remained, though, as 17 people were pulled alive from the rubble on Monday.
But heavy thunderstorms complicated rescue efforts, forcing crews to move gingerly around downed power lines and jagged chunks of debris while searching for victims and survivors.
Search teams fanned out in waves across several square miles of wasteland resembling London after the Blitz. Groups went door to door, making quick checks of property that in many places had been razed to their foundations.
Kerry Sachetta, the principal of Joplin High School, said he could barely recognize his flattened school building.
"You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing," Sachetta said. "That's really what it looked like."
NWS Director Jack Hayes said the storm was given a preliminary label as an EF4 -- the second-highest rating assigned to twisters based on the damage they cause. Hayes said the storm had winds topping 198 mph, and at times the tornado reached a width of three-quarters of a mile.
St. John's Regional Medical Center, where staff had only moments to hustle their patients into the hallway, was shredded by the twister, which killed six people -- five patients and one visitor.
The damage to the facility was so extensive that doctors had to abandon the hospital soon after the twister passed, according to AP reports.
Dr. Jim Riscoe said some members of his emergency room staff showed up after the tornado with injuries of their own, but they worked through the night anyway.
"I spent most of my life at that hospital," Riscoe told AP from a makeshift triage center established at Joplin's Memorial Hall entertainment venue.
"It's awful. I had two pregnant nurses who dove under gurneys ... It's a testimony to the human spirit," the doctor said.
Dazed tornado survivors tried salvaging whatever they could from their flattened or badly damaged homes.
Kelley Fritz rummaged briefly through the remains of a storage building before giving up. Her boys, both Eagle Scouts, rushed into the neighborhood after realizing every home was destroyed. When they returned, she said, "my sons had deceased children in their arms."
Justin Gibson said he was prepared for the worst and expected to lose friends and family in the catastrophe. As he stood outside the tangled remains of a Home Depot, Gibson pointed to a black pickup truck that had been tossed about like a Matchbox car. He said the truck belonged to his roommate's brother, who was last seen at the store with his two young daughters.
"I don't know the extent of this yet," Gibson said, "but I know I'll have friends and family dead."
Once a thriving mining town, Joplin flourished though World War II because of its rich lead and zinc mines. It also gained fame as a stop along Route 66, the storied highway stretching from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., before freeways diminished the city's importance.
The community, named for the founder of the area's first Methodist congregation, is now a transportation crossroads and manufacturing hub. It's also the hometown of poet Langston Hughes and "Gunsmoke" actor Dennis Weaver.
Major employers in and around the city include electronics manufacturer LaBarge Inc., colleges such as Missouri Southern State University and hospitals and clinics. Agriculture is also important to the economy.
Material from the Associated Press, the Joplin Globe and other media outlets was used in this report.
VIDEO from The Associated Press: