A year pressed itself into three weeks, and a generation’s worth of hurt was ratcheted into five minutes. Bricks flew at 150mph blowing holes clear through cars, trucks, and buildings. Vehicles were left mangled and flipped, hundreds if not thousands of roofs sheered clear or partially off, side walls and parapets collapsed, windows were blown out and glass was shattered all over—everywhere. A spaghetti of power lines lay down the alleys and backyards, trees exploded and splayed across many streets or crushing cars or homes, most cell towers and street lights down.

A mile wide scratch cut through North St. Louis on Friday, May 16th, about 3pm. The tornado was given a preliminary EF3 rating two days later. Over six thousand homes were either destroyed or majorly damaged with over ten thousand structures damaged.

It happened to hit the redlined neighborhoods almost exclusively. Academy-Sherman, Jeff-Vander-Lou, The Ville, Fairground, Fountain Park, Penrose, Kingsway West, and more—they are living in the post-apocalypse, surrounded by relative normalcy in all directions. Forest Park and Lindell, and Dutchtown, all also hit, with Forest Park dramatically scarred in particular. Not to mention the wild destruction in Sikeston, MO, that same day, and the same supercell from there putting down another massive tornado in Tennessee. There were fifty-five tornadoes across the midwest and south over May 15 & 16 resulting in 28 deaths. Seven were in St. Louis by the final count. The London tornado later that same night tracked through London and Somerset, KY. It was an EF4 on the ground for over 90 minutes and had 19 deaths, hundreds of injuries. I’ll share more context for the 2025 tornado season towards the end.

In North St. Louis thousands of families are left with storm damage, and thousands of homes are only borderline habitable. Many with active leaks. This is the time pressure piece and the public health concern. There’s a lot of drenched wood, drywall, particle board… I’ve walked up in many of these homes and the mildew smell was strong already the first week. We’ve had a lot of rain since then, and it’s going to get a lot hotter.

To drive around, what it looks like in terms of life is folk sharing time, sharing a porch, some yard work, a meal, a coffee—but this is a thoroughly shared experience. Nearly all of the initial clearing was done by hand, by the community. In the first few weeks if you were walking around maybe hauling debris to a curb there was a high chance someone would drive by and offer you a hot meal. There’s been a pervasive, grassroots feeding mission: hundreds of popup meal sites, often just a plastic table set up on a sidewalk and somebody cooking with a grill behind them, or a family making sandwiches. This was going in full force the first day, within hours I’m told. There are always trucks and crews working, especially on the power lines and trees. Very few are working on the homes, most of which were uninsured. That isn’t because this is a community that doesn’t want to insure their domiciles.

And if you live here I encourage you to drive around if you haven’t. If you haven’t been down Page or Newstead or MLK yet you can get a sense of it without disturbing anyone. St. Louis Ave would give you a good sense of it as well. I wouldn’t go down residential streets but arterials are fine. If you’re inclined, have the time, and are able, it’s also easy to pitch in with just a couple of hours here and there. Check out any of ActionSTL, Invest STL, 4TheVille, or Dream Builders for more grassroots involvement, or they can always use help at the Urban League or the Red Cross and the other national partners.

I started to write this post the Monday after the tornado, May 19th, and deleted quite a few drafts. It’s hard to write or think about. It doesn’t get to me during the day, but if I sit and let myself reflect on what all I’ve seen, heard and experienced, let alone try to write about it, that gets hard quick. I’m also exhausted and feel overwhelmed by the task before our community, and I’m grieving this event and what’s most likely to happen from here.

I’ve sat with residents in the shelters, swallowed nerves up on sketchy roofs, racked up splinters at distribution sites, chilled in a backyard and cracked a beer with a family, ate cold sandwiches and empanadas on tailgates, and against every instinct, also sat in meetings. Some meetings were exceptionally good. Some I will get a lot of mileage out of as examples of what not to do. I don’t know how yet, but this time changed my life. It’s been a privilege, truly, to see a breadth and depth of human experience these last weeks. I didn’t get a chance to document much of it, but I try to keep my camera in the car and shot when I could. And many of these, noted with the 5.7mm focal length, were shot on iPhone.

Heartbreak

Blog Gallery About

Heartbreak

Cinco de Mayo - Rainy & Cold Edition

Blog Gallery About