As it happened, people throughout the city were caught by surprise because St. Louis’s 60 outdoor warning sirens were not triggered. St. Louis’s emergency management chief, Sarah Russell, was in a workshop at the time, and failed to provide clear instructions to the Fire Department to give the warning. It wouldn’t have mattered; upon later inspection, city officials learned the button to trigger the warning system was not working.
Eventually, Davidson and Jackson were rescued. Penelton, along with four other St. Louisians across the city, died. Dozens of people were injured. Thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed, with an estimated $1.6 billion in damage across the city.
A drive through North St. Louis shows at least two kinds of damage. There are gorgeous, old brick buildings—some boarded up long ago. Payday loan shops are frequent. Some homes are toppled. In front of some, people guard fallen bricks, which can go for $270 a pallet, valuable material that belongs as much to the home as St. Louis’s history of well-built structures.
In the days after the storm, NAACP St. Louis issued a report that tied historic redlining from the 1930s—which designated predominantly Black neighborhoods as “hazardous” investments—to modern insurance bias. Decades ago, color-coded maps labeled in red those neighborhoods that were deemed unsuitable for mortgages or insurance. Although this practice was outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, old-school redlining has been updated through other modern methods. A Missouri Department of Insurance study found race was the most predictive factor in determining a person’s insurance score today, and therefore their premium. Poor credit scores, which are also linked to race, can increase premiums by 78 percent.
It’s far from theoretical. Researchers found that between 67 to 70 percent of households in North St. Louis were uninsured or underinsured. This is almost seven times the national average, though the six million homeowners who do not have adequate insurance nationally are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and Native American.
Family members can take the case to probate court, which costs money and usually results in assets being split across multiple heirs. But without a clear title, any heir can force all other owners to sell—which leaves the group vulnerable to developers if any single heir is willing to sell. Heirs’ property status can also disqualify homeowners from insurance policies.
In St. Louis, residents waited to apply for individual aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, funds that were delayed for weeks until President Donald Trump approved Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe’s request to declare major disasters in response to the tornado. Two thousand staffers short, FEMA announced in April that the agency would be ending door-to-door canvassing after disasters, a move that imperils those who are most vulnerable: the elderly, people with disabilities, those without transportation.
When I visit St. John’s United Church of Christ in early July one Sunday morning, the sanctuary is packed, except for a few front rows saved for congregants. Everywhere else there are cases of bottled water and baby diapers, tents, tarps, tools, rakes, caulk, rope. It’s part distribution center, part volunteer hub.
At this point, though, people are tired, Higgins tells me. North St. Louis was already experiencing an unemployment crisis, a housing insecurity crisis, a fentanyl crisis. People in North St. Louis heard about the rapid response to restore Forest Park, an urban space larger than Central Park. With people in North St. Louis still living in their cars and suffering in the heat, she can’t help but wonder why help has been so slow to arrive.
Her view of the city’s response is tangled with mistrust of developers. Those suspicions are fueled, in part, by the recent mayoral campaign in which former Mayor Tishaura Jones, whom Higgins calls a “Northside baby,” was ousted by Spencer just weeks before the tornado. Spencer ran with financial backing from developer Bob Clark’s Clayco, which donated (among other money) $111,330.25 to Spencer’s PAC—the amount he said his firm, Clayco, spent on a redevelopment bid rejected by the former Mayor Jones’s office. A construction company gave $10,000 to Spencer; real estate companies gave thousands; another Clayco subsidiary, Lamar Johnson Collaborative, gave $50,000 in March. Spencer (whose office did not respond to multiple requests for comment) out-fundraised and outspent Jones this spring. Jones, who defeated Spencer in 2021’s mayoral race, had campaigned on restoring underserved areas like North St. Louis; her coffers were not entirely free of architecture and builders’ dollars either.
“People are living in their cars. People are living in tents. They’re trying to protect their belongings as much as they can,” a frustrated Jones told me. “There’s no plan for any sort of temporary housing.” (Temporary shelters for tornado-impacted people closed July 11.) Jones has seen families filling plastic bins and trash bags and planning to stay at hotels until their money runs out. These are families leaving legacy homes, long paid-off places their grandparents bought “right when they escaped the Jim Crow South.”
Thus far, Jones told me she is not aware of anyone receiving offers to purchase damaged North St. Louis homes, but neighbors are reporting new faces driving through, raising red flags.
When I asked St. Louis NAACP president Adolphus M. Pruitt II about what some view as a city response that has neglected certain neighborhoods, he told me that the overall tornado recovery in St. Louis was conducted by faith-based and social services organizations—which makes sense.
Pruitt is more focused on failures he perceives with the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance, which he says failed the residents of North St. Louis by not doing market studies long before the storm to reveal whether insurance companies have been redlining. Without regulation and oversight, too many residents now lack coverage in the midst of disaster—a situation the regulator could have helped avoid.
Moreover, he notes, many of the residents whose homes were damaged in North St. Louis were renters. He’s less concerned about one off-site property owner selling to another. But for those properties that were owner-occupied, “Their property’s been destroyed. That was their home. Now, some developer coming and taking advantage of them, their hardship,” taking away the wealth accumulated there, “yes, that I’m concerned about.”
She shares a public school district with her neighbors to the north of Delmar and describes what she’s seen as a “Katrina-level disaster.” People’s homes are not livable, some filling with mold. Others have tarps for roofs that will not hold through winter. She’s part of a group that came together after the storm and calls itself the Street Angels. One volunteer, Wesley Klaus, has been doing pro-bono mason work all over the neighborhood. Thus far the Street Angels have raised $50,000 in private donations alone, put toward dumpsters for trash removal, “and we are nowhere near done.”
Rand is careful to note that her neighbors north of Delmar are not in a neglected neighborhood. Their large homes are lovingly maintained. These families have insurance and have registered with FEMA. They are ticking off all the required boxes, despite the horror of the storm. One of these neighbors, for example, is a veteran and former firefighter who had his foot severed when a beam crashed through his house during the tornado.
Shortly after our interview, Jones let me know she received a call from a company called Doorstep, buying homes in her area, with a bonus for referrals to others interested in selling. When I called the number back, I got an AI messaging service for a company calling itself Home Nest (not Doorstep). Both companies’ LLCs are registered in Missouri, run by real estate agents located in and around St. Louis. The AI bot cheerfully told me, “We help homeowners get a fair cash offer for their homes.”
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