![]() “And Gary Duncan is a great storyteller who can make those business comparisons come to life for Sioux Falls leaders,” Brown said. Sioux Falls and Joplin share similarities, said Vernon Brown, SDN’s vice president of marketing. “Standard operating procedure in tornado alley is, if you have a business (and) the siren goes off, you lock the doors,” Duncan said. ![]() The city also has changed its requirements for residential construction to make houses more secure against high winds and has added large safe rooms to its new schools.īusinesses should appoint a disaster coordinator and prepare to lock down when tornado sirens go off, so employees and customers don’t end up in parking lots or outside, Duncan said. “Even in this emergency, we got ahold of a lot of our employees by texting.” “Put that in your company disaster plan: text,” Duncan said. ![]() Tips included knowing what insurance covers, educating about emergency sirens and safe places, and establishing communication plans for when phone service and Internet are down. The disaster produced advice for businesses and residents, he said. “It got a lot of people involved in some way in planning for recovery.” “So they interviewed hundreds and hundreds of residents,” Duncan said. Employers, including the hospital, said employees would remain on the payroll until buildings were replaced.Ī citizen recovery team vowed to use the disaster as a change for long-term planning as the community was rebuilt. The superintendent and school board committed that all students would be in classrooms by August. The City Council set a deadline for removing debris. Leadership in the days immediately following the disaster was critical, Duncan said. “You literally didn’t know where you were,” Duncan said. The town also lost six apartment complexes, major retailers including Walmart and Home Depot, several schools and medical services from dental offices to dialysis centers. It would be the University of Sioux Falls, downtown and the seat you’re sitting in.”Ībout 9,000 Joplin residents were displaced by the tornado. “It would be exceedingly close to Avera McKennan. “It would take The Empire Mall, O’Gorman High School, the VA hospital, Sanford,” he said. ![]() It cut a path of destruction that would leave Sioux Falls similarly decimated if a tornado hit the city.ĭuncan showed a map of an equivalent area to the audience at the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown. While most tornadoes move at a speed of 35 mph, this one churned as slowly as 10 mph, Duncan said. It was one of those unbelievable scenarios.” ![]() “Patients were being treated in the parking lot, in the front foyer and every place we could find in the hospital to take them. “These are patients with penetrating wounds. John’s Regional Medical Center, leaving Duncan’s hospital to treat 1,000 patients in the first 18 hours after the disaster. The tornado severely damaged Joplin’s other hospital, St. He shared his insight as part of a series of educational events organized by SDN Communications. Gary Duncan was CEO of Freeman Health System, one of two hospitals in the Missouri city, when an EF-5 tornado ravaged the town in May 2011, killing 161 people. Leadership is the key to recovering from disaster, a retired hospital administrator from Joplin, Mo., told a Sioux Falls audience Wednesday as he recounted how his community survived a massive tornado. ![]()
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