[yorkieusa]

Piotrowski believes the answer to the second question is that second siren.

Jose de Leon is one of many people living in Joplin who heard the storm sirens the first time. He was in his apartment at 2123 Rhode Island Ave., Unit 13. He saw the warnings on the evening news.

Officials had sounded the first alarm 30 minutes before the tornado hit the city limits.

“I had plenty of time,” he admitted. “I didn’t take it seriously.”

Piotrowski, who has been in Joplin interviewing witnesses and survivors, said many people told him a similar tale — they took note of the first siren, but didn’t take cover. The second siren got everyone’s attention. He said it was a “call to action.”

“People said that put them in the mind of ‘uh-oh.’ They took the second siren seriously. At that point, they knew something bad was going to happen.”

Keith Stammer, director of emergency management for Joplin and Jasper County, said that Sunday afternoon he was monitoring a number of sources, everything from weather reports to 911 calls. And on the ground, he started getting reports from spotters and police in the field, people such as Piotrowski.

Joplin doesn’t normally sound storm sirens more than once. Stammer said that’s because most tornadoes are “short-track, short-lived.”

Besides, sounding them twice can be dangerous: Some people interpret the second signal as an all clear.

On Sunday, he broke his rule.

“I decided to sound the alarms twice on Sunday,” he said. “We usually only sound them once. Most of our storms indicate they are an F-1 or F-2, and dissipate quickly. This one wasn’t going away, however, and all indicators and reporters in the field said it was strengthening.”

‘Stay with it ...’

“Stay with it Kathryn, stay with it Kathryn, we’re going right down toward it,” Piotrowski yelled as Kathryn videotaped their path and Jeff drove south on Schifferdecker toward 20th Street.

“Oh crap! Why are you doing that?” his wife yelled back.

“Because, we don’t have no other roads. It’s a large tornado, a maxi wedge on the ground.”

Back on the phone with emergency services, a woman responder picked up another call that the couple made.

“Ma’am, this is Jeff Piotrowski, storm chaser. I have a large destructive tornado, on the southwest side of Joplin. Notify! Notify! Large debris on the ground doing massive damage … going through the city.”

“Oh my God,” Piotrowski said, as clouds of destructive metal and shards of boards and signage were hurled to the ground and flying by his truck.

Piotrowski had unwittingly turned almost directly into the its path. He began speeding east on 20th Street, trying to stay ahead of the tornado.

“Going east, going east, right here,” Piotrowski narrates to a tape that was in danger of never being seen. He said it felt like the tornado was attempting to suck his truck into the storm.

Kathryn filmed in silence as they raced parallel to the giant storm’s path. The storm was south of them by just enough distance that they were not pulled in. Near 20th Street and Grand Avenue, north of Joplin High School, the couple watched a van with two women in it picked up and pushed through the air toward a pole.

“Back up!” Kathryn yells. Knowing that the angle at which the truck faces the wind increases their chances of survival.

“I am,” Piotrowski says, throwing the truck in reverse and positioning it for the storm.

Then, in hopes that the video will somehow make it even if he does not, Piotrowski states one last time, speaking to the tape: “It’s tearing up the entire city on the south side of Joplin right now … This is Jeff Piotrowski, storm chaser, and it’s a massive tornado doing massive destruction (voice breaks) right now on the south of Joplin. It’s at least a mile wide tornado, and it’s leveling the south side of Joplin right now.”

In the ruin

The monster flung debris into the air, causing the sky to rain, not just water, but splintered boards, twisted metal and fragments of glass.

The Piotrowskis quickly looked for the two women whose van they had last seen flying past. They found the women almost immediately, unharmed. The women had crawled out of their ruined van, able to walk. They mumbled something about a friend’s house nearby, ran down the street, and that’s the last the Piotrowskis saw of them.

The Piotrowskis turned their attention to the neighborhood near the high school, inching their own now-battered truck down Iowa Street, looking for survivors. When their truck met a barricade of twisted steel and could go no farther, they got out and walked. As the neighborhood came into full view, they were scarcely able to comprehend what they saw. Nothing was left standing.

An entire neighborhood — dozens of homes — had become scattered piles of rubble.

Continued...