DAMAGE CONTROL: Lambert before (above) and after (opposite page) the tornado. “Any large signs in front of the airport were down,” said Airports Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge. “Massive trees, massive wires down. Lots of debris. All sorts of things that had flown off and landed in front of the airport.”
the houses. My husband said, ‘You’d better prepare yourself, because you’re going to find injuries at the airport.’” But that’s not really what she found. For sure, therewas dam-
age. “Almost any large signs that existed in front of the air- port were down,” Hamm-Niebruegge said. “Massive trees, massive wires down. Lots of debris. All sorts of things that had flown off and landed in front of the airport.” Slay, who arrived not long after, said: “Glass was everywhere. Debris was all over the place. Doors actually blew out. Things were upside-down.” That said, it wasn’t nearly as bad as they’d expected. Only
five people ended up going to the hospital, and two of those were in shock from having been outside in a car when the tornado came through. The other three had minor scratches from flying glass.Lambert’sownemergency-services personnel—police, fire, and EMT — were already on the scene. “I expected when I walked in to see lots of screams and people running, and I didn’t,” Hamm-Niebruegge said. “When I walked in —and it was literally 14minutes after the tornado hit—therewas already a triage station set up just outside of the USO, which is on the lower level by the baggage claim.…Acouple ofmyteammem- bers were already there, and then [more] just started showing up shortly thereafter. You had this huge flood of people coming in,
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but it wasn’t chaotic like I had expected. The thought of devas- tation as you walked up to the airportwas pretty overwhelming, but when you walked in and you saw everybody already kicking in and doing their thing —there were a lot of police officers already at the airport, on duty, and firefighters. They had kicked in gear and, I think, calmed the fears of people.”
Plugging the Holes St. Louis County had been hit by a tornado that at its peak was rated EF4,meaning it carriedwinds of between166and200mph. More than 2,700 homes and other buildings were damaged. At the airport, ConcourseCinTerminal 1 took the brunt of the hit; all of its windows were blown out, and parts of its roof were rippedaway, letting in a flood of rainwater. All told, Lambert suf- fered $25 million to $30 million in damage. Onsite andoff, the priorities quickly became clear.“We needed
to make sure, first of all, how many people got hurt, what were some of the injuries, is there anybody else that needs assistance,” Slay said. “The other [priority] is,howdoweget the airport back in shape and operating?” For Hamm-Niebruegge and her team, that broke down into
seeing who was injured and taking care of them, getting the air- field shut down, assessing the damage, and beginning cleanup. Under FAA regulations, every airport has to have emergency- response plans for different scenarios and to conduct disaster drills every year. Hamm-Niebruegge’s people knew what they had to do, and got to it. “It was almost second nature to them,”Hamm- Niebruegge said. “They had checklists broken down by depart- ment, and then you had checklists for everybody.” The decision was made pretty quickly to close the airport