Recovery efforts are underway after a tornado outbreak across the central U.S. AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reports from St. Louis, Missouri, on how locals are lifting each other up after the disaster.
00:00Volunteers, contractors, and families are picking up the pieces after a powerful EF3 tornado ripped through St. Louis, Missouri on Friday.
00:08The experts at AccuWeather estimate the total damage and economic loss from this multi-day severe weather outbreak is $9 to $11 billion.
00:19AccuWeather's Bill Waddell is live in St. Louis this morning.
00:21Bill, neighbors, and strangers are coming together to help out, but this recovery is going to cost a lot of money.
00:30Yeah, absolutely. Ari Burney, good morning to you.
00:32You can see what's left of some of these brick homes behind us, pretty much leveled.
00:36Some of these homes have been here for a century or longer.
00:40They have weathered a lot of storms, but these homes were no match for the EF3 tornado that ripped through this part of St. Louis with winds above 150 miles an hour.
00:50Now, the cost of the damage, the economic loss, the disruptions, they have been adding up quickly.
00:57When we're looking at the extreme weather events that have happened so far this year in the U.S., and look at the growing list.
01:04AccuWeather's estimates of total damage and economic loss from this severe weather outbreak, and then you look at other tornadoes and flooding this spring.
01:12We also had that historic winter storm along the Gulf Coast and, of course, those catastrophic, deadly wildfires in California at the start of the year.
01:21Those costs are adding up quickly, and when you combine all of those estimates, AccuWeather estimates that these four major weather disasters will have a combined total damage and economic loss of $353 to $393 billion.
01:36After a storm like this, many look to the helpers.
01:40In the Midwest, that often means looking for smoke from a community cookout, and that's exactly what we found in the shadow of Pope Brilliant Presbyterian Church here in St. Louis.
01:51Marlon Whitfield says stores and neighbors have pulled together with donations, food, and grills to make sure that families who lost everything in this tornado are at least getting a hot meal, and they have a shoulder to lean on.
02:03This is their home, right?
02:06It's typical to get up and leave after a tragic, but when you have people like this that come together and want to be strong and help each other, then it makes sense and makes you want to stay and be more resilient.
02:14And there's a lot of elderly people, again, some people didn't have insurance, so that's was all they had.
02:18So us being able to give back and just day by day make it a little bit better to deal with.
02:22It's great to see St. Louis come together and help each other like this.
02:24Even with this outpouring of support, people we're talking with say they need a lot more help here in St. Louis.
02:34Some of the people we've been speaking with on these damaged blocks have been asking us where are the state resources?
02:40Where are more of the federal emergency officials and disaster organizations?
02:45But city leaders also confirming yesterday, just to add up on top of this, that unfortunately it was human error.
02:52That's the reason why sirens were not issued before the tornado hit this part of St. Louis.
02:58So again, there's a lot of questions.
03:00There's a lot of big cleanup here.
03:01And guys, coming up in our next hour, we're going to be hearing from one woman just down the block who survived this tornado.
03:08She says she was actually blown out of her home.
03:10It was leveled.
03:11And now she's trying to figure out what to do next.
03:15You know, Bill, you've done a lot of coverage.
03:19And severe weather in this country isn't the exception.
03:23It's the rule.
03:23But when you look at what we've had so far this year, it's not just the amount of billion-dollar disaster.
03:31It's the different types that we've been dealing with.
03:36Absolutely.
03:36I mean, look at January, the start of the year.
03:39That's typically not wildfire season, but we saw those catastrophic fires in January, the big winter storm impacts from the Gulf Coast with the snow.
03:47Of course, this time of year, we have seen so many tornadoes, heartbreaking damage, plus the flooding.
03:53And, Bernie, you know we're just a few weeks away from the start of hurricane season.
03:57So when it comes to our disaster estimates, it is outpacing recent years.
04:00When you look at those graphs, the numbers are adding up quickly.
04:03We haven't even started the Atlantic hurricane season, so it's going to be a very expensive, we believe a possibly very impactful year to come.
