Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency will survey and assess the damage caused by an EF3 tornado in the St. Louis region and other parts of Missouri, beginning on Wednesday.
When the survey is complete, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe said on Monday that his office will ask for a major disaster declaration from President Donald Trump, which would unlock more federal assistance.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley called on the government to speed up its process.
"FEMA has a lot of resources, and we want to see all of them deployed here," Hawley said at a Monday press conference. "We want to see assistance come in full to this area, so I'm going to be a dog on a bone with that."
Kehoe has already requested an emergency declaration. If approved by the White House, the declaration would give Missouri access to $5 million in immediate funding to support the emergency response and debris removal.
The surveyors will assess the damage in St. Louis, St. Louis County and six other counties in southeast Missouri in order to determine if the state qualifies for individual and public assistance under the major disaster declaration.
Individual assistance would provide extra cash for temporary housing, housing repairs and replacement of damaged belongings and vehicles. The public assistance would help pay for repairs to roads, bridges and other public infrastructure.
"I'm hoping that the federal government kicks into gear here today," St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said. "We absolutely desperately need federal assistance, and we are leaning on them to do what they can."
Elected officials also would like to receive other help. Asked about Kehoe sending extra assistance via the Missouri National Guard, Spencer said the area could use it.
"We could absolutely use the manpower," Spencer said on Monday. "Look, our folks have been working around the clock for 48 hours now, and they have done an incredible amount of work, but there is so much more work to be done. We absolutely need the manpower, and it could absolutely be helpful."
As federal assistance is considered by the assessors to go toward repairing the estimated $1 billion in damages in the city, Hawley warned insurance companies, which he said provide a majority of the help, against denying or delaying coverage.
"To all of the insurers in the state, you need to pay out your claims," Hawley said. "You're making lots of money, and you've made a lot of money on these people. It's time now to pay out their claims in full."
Hawley, chair of the U.S. Senate subcommittee that oversees federal disaster relief, recently panned insurance companies over that very topic at a Capitol Hill hearing.
Ameren Missouri said there remain about 30,000 outages — 80% of which are concentrated in the city — as of early Monday afternoon.
The public can expect to see power come back online throughout the week, but the remaining power outages may be tough to fix, said Landy Wince, a senior director of operations at Ameren.
"It could be up to Friday for some of these properties," Wince said. "Some of them will not get restored because they're just not … they're not inhabitable."
Spencer and Police Chief Robert Tracy said the city's curfew between 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. for neighborhood Districts 5 and 6, the parts of the city hit hardest, will remain in place until further notice.
While there have been individual reports of looting, Tracy said there hasn't been much.
"Very proud of the community, proud of the people coming together and not seeing any of that," Tracy said. "But that doesn't mean we're not going to be vigilant to ensure that that doesn't happen."
As rain is forecast to hit the region on Monday night, Spencer said the city will continue to ask people to call 211 or the American Red Cross for housing and asked that residents "exercise extreme caution when reentering their buildings."
St. Louis County continues to assess damage and work on recovery
Around 80,000 people were without power Friday in St. Louis County after the tornado touched down in Clayton and carved its way through Richmond Heights and University City, then made a path through the city of St. Louis.
County Director of Emergency Management Michele Ryan said most of the county has had its power restored.
"Ameren cleared 50,000 power outages in two days," Ryan said Monday. Ryan said an AI program is being used that takes information from the National Weather Service to identify the specific path of the tornado. She said this is helping to find addresses and people impacted by the storm more quickly. The program downloads the addresses into a spreadsheet, Ryan said.
"It would have taken us days to get all of those addresses the old fashioned way," Ryan said.
Clayton and the west side of Forest Park sustained the most damage, said St. Louis County Executive Sam Page: 100-year-old trees were knocked over, and transformers ended up in people's kitchens.
"We've been assisting our municipalities when they ask us for help and coordinating with the City of St. Louis and providing services there as well," Page said.
Stephanie Leon Streeter, director of Transportation and Public Works for the county, said that as of Monday evening, about 50 tons of debris, which is equivalent to about 25 elephants, had been moved.
Officials said they aren't sure how much financial damage the county sustained. They said they won't know until FEMA arrives on Wednesday.
Ryan said five FEMA teams are being sent — one to the county and four to the city. She said that she believes the emergency group's response timing isn't as slow as some may think, and that it's standard for FEMA to be in the region within a week of the disaster occurring.
SLPS, Clayton, University City districts continue to recover
St. Louis Public Schools will continue to reroute some students to neighboring schools until Thursday, when the school year ends.
One of the primary school bus providers, First Student, said it was unable to transport students after the storm damaged its bus storage facility. The district said Monday that 87 of its bus routes did not run Monday morning, with 57 unable to run Monday afternoon.
During an aid distribution event on Monday, SLPS officials said they believe hundreds of families in the district were impacted by Friday's storms.
They served over 100 families during the event and have been fielding calls from social workers and family support specialists across the district.
"We are serving 5,000 unhoused students, and to have 5,000 homes impacted, that number can mean so much more to our district. So, we're kind of intentional about making this make sense for our unhoused population," said Deirdre Thomas-Murray, director of Students-in-Transition Services, which supports the district's unhoused families.
The district said it's looking for the following supplies for impacted families, which can be dropped off at district schools or the Central Office at 801 N. 11th St.:
- Air mattresses
- Batteries
- Flashlights
- Hygiene supplies (toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwash)
- Water bottles
The Clayton and University City school districts said they plan to open schools on Tuesday after both districts canceled classes on Monday due to power outages.
The Clayton School District has started a donation drive for impacted families, which can be found here.
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