Joplin missouri tornado recovery8/12/2023 ![]() ![]() It has provided crisis counseling to over 21,000 people who said they had never sought mental health help before, according to the center. Healing Joplin still operates, serving 195,000 people in the Joplin area over the last eight years. The Ozark Center program, Healing Joplin, is now a national model used by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for how a smaller community can provide mental health services after a major disaster, said Vicky Mieseeler, chief administrative officer at the Ozark Center. McCullough and others at the Ozark Center realized their city of 50,000, didn’t have enough counseling help to handle the wave of people traumatized by the storm, leading them to train those without proper mental health backgrounds to provide emotional support to those who didn’t need clinical help, but someone to listen and provide emotional support. The tornado flattened 13 miles and destroyed 8,000 buildings. John’s Regional Medical Center was on fire. Six minutes after the seventh deadliest tornado in the U.S. ![]() As a mobile crisis counselor, McCullough was used to providing mental health counseling after deadly events, but nothing on this scale. Within an hour of the tornado striking Joplin, McCullough began working with the Ozark Center, a nonprofit mental health center. Glass cut his feet as he ran down from the second floor apartment. “This one had more of a grinding noise because of all the cars that were in there hitting one another.” “It’s like a freight train,” said McCullough about the 2011 tornado that destroyed a third of the homes in Joplin, Missouri. Stephen McCullough grabbed his cellphone to call his mom in case he survived one of the deadliest tornadoes in history, and his wallet in case his corpse needed identification. ![]()
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