A rare tornado ripped through St. Louis. Days later, a community picks up the pieces

The National Weather Service says the tornado that struck St. Louis on Friday afternoon was an EF-3, with winds up to 152 mph. It barreled through the city at 55 mph, at times stretching a mile wide.

St. Louis (CNN) — Craig Cole was at the convenience store in his neighborhood of Fountain Park when the storm alerts went off on his phone. He ran to his royal blue Ram truck parked outside.

“I’m like, oh, I’m under these trees, let me reverse,” Cole said. “As soon as I reversed, I seen it all, I seen it all. (The tornado) snatched trees up, snatched them up, snatched them up.”

For the 30 seconds it took for the tornado to make its way through Fountain Avenue in the heart of the neighborhood, Cole said, he was in his truck, shaking. “I thought I was going to fly away like the Wizard of Oz,” he said.

By the time he drove back home, his house was a pile of bricks.

“My heart fell to my feet,” Cole said. “Everything I owned was inside the house.” His only possession now, he said, is the royal blue truck.

Seven blocks away, at the Roosevelt Towne Apartments, Omar Sykes was looking out the window of his 7th-floor apartment and starting to worry the storm might be more serious than he had anticipated. His phone buzzed with the storm warning.

“Usually I ignore it, but then the winds start getting real bad, windows shaking, and so I get up and I go to check on my mother,” Sykes said. As soon as he walked out of the room, the windows shattered from the winds, glass hitting the opposite walls. “I literally had like this close of a brush with death,” Sykes said.

The National Weather Service says the tornado that struck St. Louis on Friday afternoon was an EF-3, with winds up to 152 mph. It barreled through the city at 55 mph, at times stretching a mile wide.

Once Sykes got his mother to safety, he started checking on neighbors. A veteran of the Navy, where he served as a damage controlman, Sykes evacuated dozens of neighbors who needed his help. “I went door to door to evacuate people from the 8th floor down to the 6th single-handedly because we had pipes burst,” Sykes said. “There were elderly that couldn’t walk, there were kids, you know.”

For more than 12 hours, Sykes says, he searched for anyone who needed his help, canvassing block after tornado-damaged block in the North City area of St. Louis. He eventually found Grace United Methodist Church, which was already taking people in who needed shelter. Soon, the Red Cross was there, too, and the church became a makeshift headquarters for the whole area.

From those early hours of Saturday, Sykes started bringing members of his community to the church and estimated that about half of the 80 people staying there now came from his neighborhood.

But the whole time he was helping others, Sykes said, he felt he barely got any help at all, at least at first, even though first responders were right around the corner.

“I talked to fire marshals, I talked to fire chiefs, police chiefs, as many people as I could, and nobody was doing anything,” Sykes said, but he pressed on. “I had to yell at some people, I got threatened to be arrested, like, for caring about my people. And it made no sense to me, because I understand there’s a lot of people in danger, right? A lot of people going through the same situation, but y’all are right here and these people are crying out for help – elderly people, children – and y’all just drive right past and don’t bat an eye.”

CNN spoke to a dozen residents who said they also felt frustrated with the response from the city.

It was “one of the worst storms” in the city’s history, Mayor Cara Spencer told reporters Saturday. Five people died, 38 were injured, and about 5,000 buildings were impacted by the severe weather. By Sunday afternoon, more than 23,000 homes and businesses still had no power.

“There has not been a break in the response,” Spencer said, adding first responders had been working around the clock. “And the focus (is) truly on making sure we’re keeping people safe here. Many, many, many people worked throughout the night without a break and they’re still here this morning.”

Dennis Jenkerson, the city’s fire chief, said crews had been working tirelessly to respond to all the calls and the fire department spent all of Saturday “sweeping and rolling down and inspecting every street in this city.”

Gov. Mike Kehoe said he has been in contact with federal officials about getting disaster relief.

On Enright Avenue, in the working-class neighborhood of Academy/Sherman Park, most homes are missing roofs, windows or walls. At the end of the 2200 block, a massive elm tree laid across the street and six volunteers worked to chop it into smaller pieces with chain saws. Two of them dragged entire branches onto the sidewalk.

Up and down Enright, masked residents braved the dust and generator exhaust to remove debris from their homes. Tammie, a 39-year-old orthopedic nurse, had friends helping clean up the three-story house she has lived in with her three children for 11 years.

She was at work at Mercy Hospital when the storm hit, and she started getting alerts from her Ring doorbell about the hail. Her 16-year-old daughter, Talyah, was home alone and called her in a panic because she couldn’t figure out the Ring doorbell code.

“She knew the code – she put the code in all the time,” Tammie said, but Talyah was nervous. This was between 2:30 and 3 p.m. – around the time the tornado touched down.

Talyah’s bedroom is on the third floor, at the back of the house. Her brother Tyler’s bedroom, facing the front of the house, is now unrecognizable. The roof and ceiling were torn off, insulation and all, and the sun now shines down through a handful of beams, one of them still with a ceiling fan attached to it.

“It’s devastating,” Tammie said, looking out into her son’s room with her 1-year-old daughter, Tae’jah, in her arms. Pieces of the roof, broken glass and the pink fluff of fiberglass insulation were swept into piles along with damaged children’s toys and a container of diaper ointment.

By 5 p.m. Friday, help had come and boarded up some of the broken windows on the first floor. Above her front porch, a damaged gutter dangled as Tyler and a family friend went in and out removing debris from the house.

For the foreseeable future, the family will be split: Tammie will stay in a hotel with her youngest, and Talyah and Tyler will stay with family while the work in the house continues.

Annie Politte, 23, does not live on Enright Avenue, but Saturday she was helping clean up the neighborhood because “it’s just the right thing to do.” The day the tornado hit, she had just arrived to work at a group home in the suburb of St. Peters when she heard sirens going off in nearby St. Charles – still too far for people inside the home to hear.

“I was thankful that I got there when I did, because I don’t think they could hear them from inside the building,” Politte said. “The sirens are going off,” she told everyone inside. “We need to shelter.”

But some of the tornado sirens in the city did not go off, which will be investigated, Sarah Russell, commissioner of the City Emergency Management Agency in St. Louis. The citywide system of tornado sirens was being replaced and had undergone testing Thursday, according to Russell.

By Sunday, Cole and his brother Devon were barbecuing in front of the pile of bricks that used to be his house. Devon held a neon green sign that read: “Free Food – Plus More! Come Over!”

With no insurance, Cole said, he is staying with a friend for now. Still, he said he feels lucky to be alive, and wanted to help others who might be in even worse situations by distributing food and supplies.

“If it would have been any other day, it would have been me and my kids, my twins, in there,” Cole said. “I know my situation is bad, but I can get (a house) back.”

“I got life, I’m good.”

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