As the Midwest endures its worst tornado season since 1953, ICMA extends its deepest condolences to the residents of Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas who have suffered losses.

Joplin, Missouri (pop. 50,200; Mark Rohr, city manager), was hit on May 22 by the single most deadly tornado in the country since 1953. Assistant City Manager Sam Anselm says the response from individuals and other communities has been overwhelming. He says that crews (including police) from throughout the state arrived on the scene almost immediately.

“What was most moving to me,” he said, “is that the tornado struck around 5:30 p.m. Sunday evening. At 5:30 a.m. Monday morning, we had 400 firefighters from around the state waiting to go out on search and rescue.”

When they realized they’d need public works assistance – in many places roadways had to be cleared before they could search for survivors and assess the damage – Anselm realized the best strategy was to put out a call for crews on the Missouri City Managers Association (MCMA) listserv.

His first message went out around 9 p.m. Within 20 minutes, the manager of a nearby city called and said a crew was en route.

Managers responded by phone and through the listserv from Columbia, Independence, Blue Springs, Lebanon, Excelsior Springs, Union, and other communities, offering backhoes and operators, dump trucks, front loaders, heavy equipment operators, barricades, health and safety resources and personnel, an emergency management vehicle and staff, a dump truck, a heavy trailer, skid steers with grapple bucket, two F-550 medium dump trucks, chainsaws, chains, axes and hand tool shovels, a rescue truck, ATVs, command SUV, an ambulance, crews, and an operator who is also a certified building inspector.

Anselm, who’s been assistant city manager for only six weeks (previously he was the assistant to the city manager of Ferguson, Missouri), said that although things have quieted down, they expect to need public works assistance clearing debris for the next several months.

He’s glad to have professional resources to call on, whether it’s the MCMA listserv, the Local Government Knowledge Network, or his fellow managers.

He’s also grateful that although Joplin city staff suffered material damage – the fire chief lost his house, the public works director his roof – they didn’t lose any city personnel.

Those personnel will be key to what comes next.

Although it may be difficult to see in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, destruction can actually offer communities a chance to reinvent themselves. Managers are the moving force behind the process, helping their communities envision the possibilities, bringing resources together, and building a new, previously unimagined future. In an op ed for CNN, ICMA member Steve Hewitt, city manager of Clinton, Oklahoma, and former city administrator of  Greensburg, Kansas, describes how in 2007 he and his team took Greensburg from rubble to recovery.