Number of Missing From Tornado in Joplin Is Lowered to 156

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Maggie Burlingane surveyed the ruins of her daughter's home on Thursday in Joplin, Mo., where 125 are known to have died. 

JOPLIN, Mo. — The number of people unaccounted for from this week’s tornado has been reduced to 156, officials said on Friday, as families received their first official notifications of the death of loved ones.

But the situation in Joplin remained confusing for many families as the vast majority of bodies had not been released from the morgue, and the authorities were unable to agree on the number of people who had died: The city says 132; the state, which is leading the effort, says 126.
State officials said they had confirmed the identities of 19 victims of Sunday’s tornado and had notified family members. The rest of the dead will presumably remain listed among the 156 missing until those bodies are identified.
Officials in Joplin said they had been able to pare down the list of the missing from Thursday’s tally of 232 after they had received “credible reports” that 90 people on the list had been found to be safe.
But the authorities said they had also received 22 new reports of people who have been missing since the tornado ruined as much as one-third of this southwest Missouri city.
Andrea Spillars, deputy director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, who is in charge of the effort, said that after days of delays the process was now moving more quickly. She said that by the end of the day Friday most of the dead will have been identified and their families notified.
“We anticipate that many of those individuals, by the end of the day, will have gone through that process,” Ms. Spillars said.
The decision Thursday to release the names of people who have not been accounted for was greeted with relief by those helping to keep track of missing person reports, including volunteers at a call center in Joplin who had received thousands of worried inquiries from all over the country about relatives, friends, co-workers and neighbors.
“That’s actually a great number,” said Quinn Gardner, who oversees the call center for AmeriCorps St. Louis. “I mean, it’s an awful number, but it’s a lot better than some of the numbers I’ve been hearing.”
The process of identifying the dead and locating survivors who have left town has been slowed by lingering travel and communication problems since the storm. Within minutes of the original list’s being posted at the local Red Cross shelter on Thursday, one volunteer cried for joy as she was able to cross off one woman’s name.
“She’s been found!” the volunteer said. “We have to update the list.”
The original list of five pages of names, addresses and ages were a reminder of the cross section of possible victims of the tornado, which has been labeled the deadliest in the more than half a century of modern recordkeeping.
There is Howard Hayze, less than 2 years old, among about 10 people on the list whose ages could be counted on fingers. There is Louis Sparks, the oldest person on the list at 94, one of a dozen people on the list who lived at the destroyed Greenbrier Nursing Home. There are the Merritts, whose home at 3107 South Day Road had the unwelcome distinction of sheltering the most missing: Brittany, 28; Allen, 26; Alexandria, 8; Payton, 5; and Nevea, who is 2 or 3.
Also on the list is Dee Ann Haywood, 47, who had gone out to pick up some pizza to celebrate her nephew’s graduation from high school on Sunday. Her family members, who were out on Thursday posting more fliers about her, said they understood the difficulties faced by local officials, but were still frustrated.
“Of course no one has dealt with anything like this,” said Patty Penn, Ms. Haywood’s older sister. “But it’s not really well coordinated.”
That sense led Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon, to direct the state to assume responsibility from the local authorities for the process of locating people. The list had been kept private to sort through unreliable information, including numerous false reports that someone had been seen alive. But then officials decided that making it public would allow people to remove the names of people who were safe and add the names of others unaccounted for.
The list was whittled to less than a sixth of its original size of about 1,500 with records from temporary shelters, hospital logs, a “safe and well” Web site and cellphone records.
Ms. Spillars said it was a top priority to reduce the number of unaccounted for to zero.
“We will dedicate as much state resources as needed around the clock to make sure that those family members that have loved ones that they cannot find are connected,” she said.
So far, most of the bodies of tornado victims have not been released for burial because they are being identified only through forensic methods, including DNA and fingerprinting, rather than visually. The efforts have been complicated because many medical records from the local hospital were lost or destroyed. Officials said the process — even though it extended a painful period of uncertainty for some family members — was necessary to ensure that identifications were made with complete accuracy, especially given that many remains were not intact. Those who have gone to the makeshift morgue outside of town seeking to view or recover the bodies of loved ones have been turned away.
Mr. Nixon said that he understood the frustrations but that the process could not be sped up. “It’s a very difficult job,” he said. “We have the best people we have working as hard as they can.”
Later in the day Thursday, hundreds of residents gathered at Missouri Southern State University, which has become a staging ground for recovery and relief efforts, to hear state officials talk about types of assistance that would be available.
After brief speeches by the governor and other officials, residents stopped by booths to pick up packets of information and ask about insurance, federal financial aid and other topics.