Homeowners gradually rebuild in tornado-ravaged Joplin (Reuters)

JOPLIN, Mo (Reuters) – Four months ago, a tornado swept Rick and Jolene Huffman out of their house and dumped them unconscious into a clearing more than a block away.

A harrowing way to lose their home and nearly their lives but the Huffmans are rebuilding on the same spot, undaunted by memories of the tornado or devastation of their neighborhood.

"It will look a little haggard here for a while, but it will bounce back," Jolene Huffman said.

Slowly, new homes are sprouting from the ruins of the May 22 tornado in Joplin. The city has issued 307 permits to build new homes, a figure that has climbed by 25 to 30 each week.

Each house is a step toward recovery from the tornado that wiped out about 7,500 homes and took 162 lives, said Troy Bolander, manager of planning and community development for Joplin.

"The shock is just now wearing off, and that is understandable," Bolander said. "People lost their home and everything else and they didn't want to face the future.

"What is encouraging and what may help is people seeing something going up. They don't want to be the only home on the block," he said.

To rebuild in Joplin demands tolerance of a stark landscape of barren lots, shredded trees and damaged properties that remain standing. Many residents still can't get used to the empty horizon.

"This was pretty wooded around here, and now you can basically see from here to the Kansas state line," said John Hughes, who is building a new home where his old one was destroyed.

Hughes plans to plant 35-foot trees around his house.

"We can't wait for the trees to grow again. We have to buy instant shade," he said.

Like the Huffmans, Hughes said he and his wife, Carla Hughes, chose to rebuild for practical reasons -- close to jobs, close to relatives, a familiar location.

"I was hoping more of our neighbors would come back, but they chose to do something else," Hughes said.

Construction contractor Harlin Stoner, who is building the Huffmans' home on the same slab where the previous house stood, said many people can't bring themselves to rebuild.

"They are devastated and shocked, and some don't want to deal with it," Stoner said.

Some empty lots have "For Sale By Owner" signs on them, others are listed through agencies.

Ryan Flanagan, a real estate agent in Joplin, said some people with young children don't want to live around empty lots that may have old foundations or debris. Other people simply don't want to wait for their house or neighborhood to get rebuilt, he said.

"It's going to be a long-term project, and it may be ten years before anything feels normal," Flanagan said.

Bolander said an estimated 88 percent of residents who lost their housing in the tornado still live within 25 miles of Joplin. Some rent, some bought other homes, some live with family members and some live in temporary housing provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Bolander said the city is doing a housing analysis to help predict how many people might stay in Joplin long-term.

Construction contractor John Adams said houses in many neighborhoods destroyed by the tornado were 70 or more years old. People with patience and foresight will be rewarded for rebuilding, he said.

"Sooner or later they will be surrounded by new homes," Adams said. "It will probably be much nicer than it ever was."

(Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Ellen Wulfhorst)

View the original article here

Insight: Japan struggles to rebuild, leaving lives in limbo (Reuters)

YAMADAMACHI/TOKYO (Reuters) – Sakari Minato has fixed up his house just enough for his family to move back in. The walls still have holes, the windows are temporarily sealed. You can still see the water marks on the outside of the home left by the March 11 tsunami that roared into this northeastern coastal fishing town at the speed of a freight train and bulldozed everything in its path.

Minato doesn't know whether to spend the $100,000 needed to completely restore the house or move the family to higher ground away from the ocean. He still doesn't know whether the government will declare his part of town by the coast an uninhabitable tsunami zone.

Five months after Japan's worst disaster in generations left more than 20,000 dead or missing, entire communities along the country's northeastern coast face a similar dilemma. They have cleaned up much of the rubble and mud, fixed up roads and restored power. Tokyo and local governments, however, have yet to come up with detailed plans and money needed to start the actual rebuilding.

Every day of delay brings more agony for hundreds of thousands of survivors who cannot move on with their lives and makes it increasingly unlikely the economy will get a powerful jolt from the rebuilding effort any time soon.

"Even if I get the house fixed, it could be the case that the national government ends up buying this area in two years because it's a tsunami-flooded district," said Minato, a 48-year-old auto dealer. "So we stopped fixing the house for now since it's good enough to live in."

His family barely escaped the deadly waves and a fire that wiped out most houses in his neighborhood in Yamadamachi, a fishing town about 470 km northeast of Tokyo which lost nearly 800 of its 19,400 residents.

When the disaster struck on March 11 government planners, economists and aid agencies looked back 16 years when a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit Kobe killing 6,400. The conclusion was that the triple blow of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, a tsunami that reached heights of 15 meters (50 feet), and a nuclear plant meltdown crisis, eclipsed anything Japan had experienced in the past half a century.

Yet Tokyo was expected to crank out a hefty emergency budget by August, allowing rebuilding to start in earnest in the second half of the year. Even as that timetable slipped, the government remained optimistic that reconstruction would kick in by the final quarter of this year.

WISHFUL THINKING

Today this looks like wishful thinking and reasons can be found both on Japan's northeastern Pacific coast and in Kasumigaseki, Tokyo's government district.

"Reconstruction would be a big boost to the economy ... But full-fledged rebuilding may need to wait until next year," said Takashi Onishi, professor of city and regional planning at the University of Tokyo.

Onishi sat on the government's advisory panel on reconstruction and is helping the fishing towns of Kamaishi and Kesennuma in their reconstruction planning.

Japan's steel industry initially counted on reconstruction to boost demand by 3-4 million tonnes over the next three years, but analysts have slashed their forecasts for next year and beyond by as much as half.

About half of the estimated 22.6 million tonnes of rubble the tsunami left behind has been cleared and the government aims to remove most of the debris from residential areas by the end of this month.

But out of nearly half a million people displaced by the disaster, 84,000 remain in evacuation centers, temporary housing or with relatives or friends. They will not move on until local authorities decide what they want to rebuild and what to move out of the danger zone. Once that is decided, Tokyo will draw up a national plan and allocate funds.

"How much will the government help? Or big firms and reconstruction funds? We are reliant on them and the question is where is the money," said Katsutoshi Tomiyama, 70. His jazz café in the picturesque fishing town of Rikuzentakata was swept away and he hopes to reopen it in neighboring Ofunato, where he lives in temporary housing.

Officials in Tokyo point the finger up north and vent their frustration with how slowly requests from local communities are trickling in. Some local officials admit they are overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

"Honestly speaking, this is the first experience for us as well and we are now fumbling our way to figure out what and how to move forward," said one official at a coastal town in Iwate prefecture. The town hopes to have a final reconstruction plan ready by the end of the year.

Similarly in Rikuzentakata, where nearly 1,800 of its 24,250 residents are dead or still missing, officials aim to prepare a plan in November hoping to get money from the regular budget for the next fiscal year starting in April 2012 rather than this year's emergency allotments.

That means that the bulk of the spending may be pushed back well into next year.

"The national government has revealed a basic plan, but the details are not out yet," city official Takeo Banno said.

The relocation of homes to safe areas, which is one of the focal points of the rebuilding, could take several years.

"In three to five years, large-scale relocation of houses is likely to make headway," says Shogo Tsugawa, a senior government official in charge of rebuilding of Iwate prefecture.

RE-THINKING AND REBUILDING

To be fair, those dealing with the aftermath of March 11 face a task like none before and Prime Minister Naoto Kan was not exaggerating when he said Japan faced its biggest crisis since World War Two.

Rebuilding what was damaged the way it was done after Kobe is not an option. Even before the disaster struck the Tohoku region was in trouble.

Its fragmented fishing industry was struggling to stay afloat, agriculture dominated by small-plot farmers well past retirement age and its working population was shrinking at the fastest rate in all of aging Japan, having fallen more than 8 percent in the past 15 years.

"We need to avoid just doing the recovery job to pre-quake conditions," said Ryutaro Kono, chief economist at BNP Paribas, who sat on the reconstruction panel.

Among the proposals are consolidating the fishing business, giving tax breaks for investors and creating special economic zones. They also include relocating homes to more elevated areas and rebuilding ports and other tsunami-ravaged facilities.

Aside from the sheer complexity of the challenge is the slow grind of the political process.

The deeply unpopular and increasingly isolated Kan has struggled to pull together his divided party and get any sort of cooperation from an openly hostile opposition that controls the upper house of parliament.

It took two months to get the first $50 billion batch of emergency spending out and another two to sign off on the next $25 billion installment, both earmarked for the initial relief, clean-up and temporary housing.

More than five months after the catastrophe the main spending plan worth up to 13 trillion yen has yet to take shape and no clarity on how it will be financed.

With Kan on his way out, it is anyone's guess when the "big budget" will be ready.

"Government agencies need to work on the extra budget and next year's budget at the same time but there are limitations in terms of manpower," one finance ministry official said.

TIMING MATTERS

In contrast to exasperated residents, financial markets have been sanguine about signs of slippage in reconstruction timetable. Those who are now rethinking their growth assumptions beyond this quarter are more concerned about the strength of the yen and clouds gathering over the global economy.

Some economists say their colleagues may be too complacent and point out that while rebuilding spending will come sooner or later, the timing matters too.

Up to now, the base scenario has been that the serious money will start pouring in the final quarter of this year and early in 2012. That would boost sectors such as construction, steel and machinery at a critical time when the global economy may hit a soft patch and the upswing driven by companies restoring supply chains will have run its course.

Now the risk is the big rebuilding effort will not come in time to act as a cushion.

"Come the winter, seasonal factors may further delay construction projects," said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

"From October-December and beyond, the economy is likely to show visible impact from the yen's strength and if there is no lift from reconstruction, the economy's rebound is likely to peter out in the fourth quarter," Kumano says.

While the economy may still get a reprieve if Japan's main export markets recover, those living in the belt of destruction on the coast can only wait or leave.

Hiroki Haga, 63, whose newspaper delivery service in the coastal town of Otsuchicho was washed away by the tsunami, says the risk is that young people will pack up and look for work elsewhere.

"The basics of how the town should be rebuilt are not ready. Our mayor died. No one can do anything."

(Additional reporting by Yuko Takeo; Writing by Yoko Kubota, Rie Ishiguro and Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

View the original article here

Joplin school district tries to rebuild, reinvent (AP)

JOPLIN, Mo. – The twister that laid waste to much of Joplin last month hit the school system especially hard: It killed seven students and one teacher and destroyed three school buildings, including the only public high school. Seven other buildings were badly damaged.

Now officials are trying to put the crippled district back in order, with only a couple of months to get everything working again before the fall term begins. Many classes will have to meet in vacant buildings. There are also computers to order, furniture to replace, water-logged lesson plans to rewrite — even dirt-encrusted books to salvage.

And the effort goes beyond accommodating students and teachers. In the aftermath, the resurrection of Joplin High and other public schools has become a rallying point for the whole community.

At the debris pile that used to be the high school, someone used duct tape to turn a sign missing all but two letters from "OP" into ""HOPE." In front of that sign are three wooden eagles — the school mascot — carved by a Tennessee artist from the remnants of oak trees that were sliced in two and stripped of their bark by the nation's deadliest single tornado in six decades.

"Her feathers are ruffled, but she's not dead," reads a nearby spray-painted, cardboard sign.

Barely three weeks after the storm, summer school began last week. More than 1,600 elementary school students alone enrolled — almost double the number from last year. The district added an extra month of classes for a session that was initially scheduled to end in early July. And unlike previous years, it's offering free transportation.

"These children don't have a home to live in," said Irving Elementary School Principal Debbie Fort, whose school was one of those destroyed. "Parents know they need to get a routine back. Their lives have been turned upside-down."

Because so many buildings were damaged or destroyed, half of the high school students will attend classes in an empty big-box store. Many middle school kids will go to a vacant warehouse in a far-flung industrial park. Some administrators will take over an old office of the state transportation department.

Signs of the tornado are visible even in schools that escaped any damage. At Stapleton Elementary, boxes of library books rescued from damaged buildings sit piled outside the main office. A 7-year-old boy matter-of-factly explains to a visitor why he's on crutches — a piece of wooden shrapnel pierced his calf, requiring emergency surgery and a week in the hospital.

The twister killed more than 150 people. Immediately after the storm, Fort searched for missing teachers. Even now, two displaced families, including one of her faculty members, are staying at her home in nearby Webb City.

Yet for the most part, the rhythm of the school day is unchanged. For many students, the classroom offers a respite from troubles at home.

"The kids are just relieved to be back at something peaceful," teacher Isaiah Basye said. "It gives them hope, to see that we're not letting the tornado change us. We're still here with open arms. This place is a haven."

The tornado forced school officials to end the spring term nine days early. Administrators have promised that fall classes will begin on time Aug. 17, and they have found alternate sites for each of the damaged or destroyed buildings.

At Junge Field, the high school football team has started practice. Its stadium was unharmed, but its practice field and weight room were both a total loss. One team member remains hospitalized. Others have yet to return after they were scattered to temporary living arrangements with friends or faraway relatives.

New coach Chris Shields lost the rental home into which he had moved some belongings even before relocating to Joplin from suburban St. Louis. Seventy students attended the first day of practice, fewer than the 85 he expected.

"When your home is destroyed, football is not always your top priority," Shields said.

Defensive end Jarad Bader said he and his teammates feel an added sense of responsibility to represent Joplin on Friday nights this fall.

"We don't really feel like we need to say, `Win for Joplin,'" he said. "We know inside that Joplin is helping us. It's time for us to help Joplin."

Said free safety Evan Wilson: "It's kind of understood. We have a lot of weight on our shoulders."

With the loss of Joplin High, which served 2,200 students, school leaders say they want to do more than merely rebuild. They envision a state-of-the-art structure that could establish Joplin not as a district scarred by disaster but as a center of innovation.

School administrators invited a panel of education leaders to a wide-ranging discussion of how the new Joplin High can emerge better than ever. Among the goals: more one-on-one learning and increased collaboration with the adjacent Franklin Technology Center, a vocational training site that was also destroyed.

"We need to let ourselves be free to dream," Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer said. "It's really hard. We're living with the reality of what happened. You almost have to give yourself permission to move past the really horrible, horrific things."

Those discussions were already taking place before the tornado, Besendorfer said. But now they have moved from hypothetical to urgent.

"This tornado accelerated that process — in about 45 seconds," she said. "We had already dreamt about `what if?' Now, it's very much `what's next?'"

___

Alan Scher Zagier can be reached at http://twitter.com/azagier

View the original article here

Mass. towns look to rebuild after deadly tornadoes (AP)

By RUSSELL CONTRERAS, DAVID COLLINS and STEPHEN SINGER, Associated Press Russell Contreras, David Collins And Stephen Singer, Associated Press – Fri Jun 3, 3:31 am ET

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – A number of Massachusetts communities are confronting the long and painful task of rebuilding shattered lives and livelihoods Friday, just days after three deadly tornadoes flattened more than 200 homes, killed at least three people and scattered debris across the state.

Gov. Deval Patrick said at least 19 communities reported damage from the violent storms, which came with fair warning, in an area of the country that rarely sees such severe twisters that destroyed homes, peeled-off roofs and the toppled steeple of a 140-year-old church.

"Some of the damage was particularly profound," Patrick said Thursday.

"In West Springfield, for example, they are reporting 88 that are total losses; in Springfield itself, about 35; in Monson 77 total losses and counting," Patrick said. "Monson was one of the communities most significantly hit."

If the National Weather Service agrees Wednesday's three deaths are tornado-related, it would bring the year's U.S. toll to 522 and make this year the deadliest for tornadoes since 1950. The highest recorded toll was 519 in 1953; four deaths from Joplin, Mo., that were added Thursday tied the record. There were deadlier years before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates.

Tornadoes are not unheard of in New England — the downtown of Connecticut's largest city was devastated by one last June — so many people heeded warnings. That didn't guarantee their survival; among the dead was a mother who shielded her teenage daughter as they huddled in a bathtub.

But in many cases, doing the right thing — quickly — helped save lives.

Karen Irla, 50, was leaving Adams Hometown Market in the picturesque village of Monson when she heard children on their bicycles yelling, "Look at that tornado!"

"I screamed and I screamed and I screamed, and that's why I have no voice today," said Irla, who drove to a nearby senior center and waited until the storm passed.

Inside the market, produce manager Frank Calabrese made a quick decision that helped keep customers and employees from coming to harm.

In a move recalling a famous video from the recent deadly tornado in Missouri that documented shoppers' terrifying moments inside a convenience store cooler, Calabrese herded them into a walk-in freezer, where six to eight endless minutes passed while the building shook and windows shattered.

"What else are we going to do?" he said. "We sat inside and waited it out."

No one in the store suffered a scratch.

The storms hit as many people headed home from work Wednesday, paralyzing motorists who could see the twister coming at them.

A fixed television camera caught dramatic images of a debris-filled tunnel cloud crossing the Connecticut River and slamming into Springfield, a working-class city of about 140,000 residents, where it cut a swath of destruction 10 blocks wide in some spots. The city is home to the Basketball Hall of Fame, which was spared damage.

Michael Valentin, 29, said he was eating at a soup kitchen near downtown when he started hearing thunder and went outside.

"All this was chaos," he said. "It was like a mad wind twisting. It was destroying everything. Cars were being smashed against walls. Pieces of wood and trees were flying in the air."

Debbie Perkins, 30, was filling up a small backyard swimming pool for some children when they spotted the funnel. They ran into the home and huddled in the basement.

"The kids, they were all screaming and crying," Perkins said. Unlike many of her neighbors, she escaped without damage to her home.

Among the injured in Springfield was a prosecutor struck in the head by debris while walking to her car; she is expected to survive, but her name was not released.

The Hampden County district attorney, Mark Mastroianni, said he barely escaped injury himself when plate glass windows shattered and blew into his office and a conference room.

"People started to scream, `Get away from the windows,' and as I was just turning to run, the glass window just came flying in," he said.

Fabiola Guerrero wept Thursday as she returned to the wreckage of her family's home, which collapsed and crushed to death her 39-year-old mother, Angelica, as she sheltered a younger daughter in a bathtub. Guerrero said her sister was trapped for two hours before being rescued.

Guerrero said her mother always said she would die for her daughter.

"She was an amazing woman," she said.

The devastation was repeated in town after town around Springfield. Some of the most severe damage was in Monson, about 15 miles away, where homes were leveled and a historic church was badly damaged.

"This isn't supposed to happen here," Sen. John Kerry said after touring the damage in Monson, usually a quiet mountain hamlet about 90 miles west of Boston.

The toppled steeple of the First Church of Monson — founded in 1762 and rebuilt in 1873 — was a symbol of the heartbreak many residents were feeling. But townspeople were relieved that no one in the town of fewer than 10,000 was killed — and were determined to rebuild.

Gov. Patrick said he was moved by gestures of goodwill.

A woman in Monson received a phone call from someone in the Boston suburb of Milton — the governor's hometown — who had recovered her checkbook register after the ferocious winds apparently carried it 90 miles.

He also addressed the death of the West Springfield woman who died while saving her daughter's life by covering her in the bathtub.

"I'm a dad, and I understand a mom or dad would do anything to save their child," Patrick said.

Authorities initially believed at least four people died but later determined that a heart attack death in Springfield was likely unrelated to the storms. A man died when a tree struck a van in West Springfield, and another person died in Brimfield, though authorities have not released details.

The governor, who declared a state of emergency allowing officials to sidestep usual regulations to provide quick relief, pledged that the state would throw all its resources behind recovery and that federal disaster assistance would be sought.

"For those who are feeling, quite understandably, that they can't imagine what a better tomorrow would look like, I want to assure that we are working to get to that better tomorrow," he said.

Massachusetts public health officials said about 200 people sought treatment for storm related-injuries.

Dr. Reginald Alouidor, a surgeon heading the trauma teams at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, said the injured at his hospital ranged in age from 2 to their mid-60s, with many suffering broken bones or other injuries from wind-driven debris.

Seven remained at the hospital Thursday, including a woman whose liver was lacerated when a building collapsed on her.

Police and National Guard troops went door to door in Springfield to check for any residents who were injured or otherwise needed help. The police chief confirmed reports of looting and other crimes, but no arrests were made.

Tens of thousands remained without power in the region.

Given the extent of damage, Patrick, who joined Kerry and Sen. Scott Brown for an aerial tour of the devastation, said it was remarkable there weren't more deaths.

While two or three tornadoes hit Massachusetts on average every year, they're usually weak and rarely strike heavily populated areas.

That may explain why the twisters caught people by surprise, said Stephen Frasier, a University of Massachusetts professor who has chased tornadoes across the Great Plains.

"Two things happened: This was bigger than the average tornado that hits Massachusetts that usually just knocks over a tree or something, and of course, it hit a populated area," Frasier said.

Tornado watches and warnings had been posted Wednesday by the National Weather Service and were broadcast by radio and TV stations, "but people just don't react to it here the way they do in other regions of the country," he said.

Most Massachusetts communities also don't have warning sirens like in the South and Plains, where people know exactly what they mean and are trained in grade school on how to react. Where sirens do exist, he said, New Englanders often treat them with curiosity rather than as a nudge to seek shelter.

In 1995, three people were killed by a tornado in the small town of Great Barrington, Mass., along the New York border. Last year's tornado in Bridgeport, Conn., heavily damaged buildings but killed no one.

On June 9, 1953, a monster tornado sliced through Worcester and other central Massachusetts communities, killing 94 people and making it one of the deadliest single tornadoes in U.S. history.

___

Collins reported from West Springfield and Singer from Brimfield. Contributing were Associated Press writers Stephanie Reitz in Hartford, Conn.; and Denise Lavoie, Mark Pratt, Bob Salsberg, Sylvia Wingfield and Rodrique Ngowi in Boston.

View the original article here