Trauma, rage, and hope
A reflection on the one year anniversary of the May 16 tornado
On April 27, 2026, there were some storms in St. Louis.
They looked pretty bad on the radar, but nothing that the midwest hadn’t seen a hundred times before. Even so, schools, local businesses, and government buildings all closed early. Phones pinged constantly with urgent weather updates. And Steve? Steve rolled up his sleeves.
You could feel the frantic energy. But the storms that day ended up pretty standard. Certainly not a good reason to close the schools (or daycares!). Yes, they looked bad on the radar, but I can’t remember another time that the schools closed for anything other than snow. As far as Midwest storms go, they were relatively banal.
So why this regional battening down the hatches? Why did we all collectively freak out?
It was a trauma response.
The St. Louis region – both its people and its institutions – was responding not to the realities of April 27, but to the memories of May 16.
You don’t need me to tell you this, but on May 16, 2025, the City of St. Louis was hit by a devastating EF3 tornado that killed five people, destroyed multiple neighborhoods, and further deepened the socioeconomic chasm that is the Delmar Divide. Like a bullet, the storm’s brevity belied it’s destruction.
This Saturday, we will mark one year since the tornado touched down, and the reality on the ground remains grim.
Many of the streets in the neighborhoods hit by the tornado look the same today as they did on the day after it hit. The federal response under President Donald Trump’s FEMA has been neglectful at best, and purposefully malicious at worst. The state response hasn’t been much better, despite Governor Mike Kehoe taking the time to incorrectly pat himself on the back.
And the local response has been absolutely dreadful.
For the past year, St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer has mostly been working hard to enact policies that benefit various donors to her campaign.
She sold a public park without voter approval (the person who wanted to buy it donated $12,600 to her campaign), removed pedestrian safety from downtown infrastructure (the person who wanted these bump-outs gone donated a $46,116.90 in-kind contribution to a PAC supporting her campaign), and approved a loud and environmentally harmful mega data center in the middle of the city (the developer donated $12,500 to a PAC supporting her campaign). Meanwhile, the north side residents whose homes and lives were destroyed have largely been placed on the back burner.
To be fair, Spencer and her administration would argue that they’re not neglecting the north side. They stood up a recovery office, successfully lobbied for more than $100 million from the State of Missouri, and had that one town hall. This morning, they announced that they want to put some of the Rams money into recovery, although agreement on the actual number remains elusive at the Board of Aldermen.
In fact, Mayor Spencer told STLPR in an interview that she is “very proud” of their recovery efforts so far.
She did a little backtracking after that, though.
The headline that Mayor Spencer feels was “disappointing” was simply a direct quote from her, and the piece that she feels omitted key facts was actually just a transcript of an interview she gave to STLPR. But it was only after the piece was published, after people outside of her echo chamber were able to read her words and react to them, that she got upset.
There clearly is some institutional anger at the Spencer administration from STLPR, and that’s never helpful for an elected leader. As a local politician, there’s only a few ways you can really piss off an entire news outlet. If you’re continuously evasive and/or abrasive, over time, it can do real damage to your professional relationship with an outlet covering your office.
I don’t think STLPR’s anger is random or unfounded, and so I have to assume that they were shunted by the mayor and her team while working on their tornado anniversary series, “TORN,” which is why reporter Kate Grumke’s questioning can, at times, sound more like a deposition than an interview.
My guess is that Grumke and her team had to dig hard and work against the mayor to get to the facts they wanted to report, and so she used those facts to drill down hard on the mayor’s statements and responses. To Cara Spencer, someone who so thoroughly despises critique that she had protestors violently arrested at her State of the City speech, that interview and the subsequent reporting had to have been pretty jarring.
I really recommend you read the entire transcript or listen to the entire interview, only to understand how truly concerning it is that Cara Spencer is leading our city as we recover from this tornado. She is simply not a leader that can meet the moment, and that sucks, because the city and its residents – especially those directly impacted by the tornado – are experiencing trauma. And we’ll continue to experience trauma as time goes on and the recovery remains slow.
We need a leader who can show empathy, take criticism, move us forward.
In the absence of that, we have each other.
The community response since the tornado has been overwhelming and, frankly, beautiful. Community organizations like Action St. Louis and FortheCultureSTL were literally on the front lines, day one, and have stayed there this entire time, despite the sheer number of other crises they have to respond to. Neighbors have stood up non-profits and volunteer organizations to help with clean up. The resilience and grit of St. Louisans has led this recovery, and will continue to.
But that’s the problem.
It shouldn’t be the empathy and dogged determination of a loose network of volunteers and regular citizens that drives this recovery. It can’t be. We’re talking about billions of dollars in damages, thousands of destroyed structures, and generations of trauma that needs to be repaired. That type of recovery needs institutional and significant financial support on the federal, state, and local level, and our government has failed us in each of these.
This Saturday, I’ll be on Enright Ave. helping to continue the slow work of clean up and recovery. You don’t have to join us, but I highly recommend that you find time to volunteer somewhere on that day, if you can.
And if you can’t, don’t worry, the work is going to continue, and the need will still be great. For quite a long time.
I still believe in St. Louis. I’m still rooting for us. But, I have no faith in our elected leaders to do the work that is necessary to make our city whole.
That means our only options is to find hope in each other.
🫡