An elderly man who identified himself only as “Mr. Lester” had no idea an empty carton of milk might have saved his life.
Just before 2:40 p.m. on May 16, 2025, Lester decided to drive to a south side grocery store. Had he stayed home, he said, he likely would have been napping on the third floor of his Fountain Park residence when a violent tornado with winds reaching 152 mph ripped through North St. Louis.
Parts of Lester’s roof and upper floor were later scattered across his backyard. Two neighboring properties also suffered severe damage.
“If I had stayed there, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Lester said quietly nearly a year later, standing outside the still-damaged home he is rebuilding largely on his own.
Freshly painted dark blue windowsills, doors and steps now stand out against lingering storm damage — visible signs of Lester’s determination to recover without local or state assistance.
“I’m gonna do what I gotta do,” he said with a shrug.
The tornado cut a destructive path through multiple North St. Louis neighborhoods, but few areas better illustrate the unequal damage and uneven recovery that followed than Ward 12, which stretches from the Baden neighborhood near Hall Street through the Ville and parts of Fountain Park and Kingsway East.
Nearly 2,000 damaged properties were reported in the ward, according to city assessments.
A July 2025 Crisis Cleanup Coalition report found that 64% of reported storm damage in Wards 10, 11 and 12 remained unresolved weeks after the tornado.
Residents, researchers and elected officials say Ward 12 became a stark example of how aging housing, vacant buildings and years of neglect magnified the storm’s destruction. Damage surveys and storm mapping later showed the tornado intensified as it moved through parts of Fountain Park, Kingsway East and Greater Ville, where older brick homes, weakened structures and vacant properties suffered some of the city’s most severe destruction.
The ward was also among the areas identified in the city’s 2018 Climate Vulnerability Assessment as especially vulnerable during major disasters because of concentrated poverty, deteriorating infrastructure and housing instability. The report warned that longstanding racial and economic disparities in North St. Louis neighborhoods would increase risks during severe weather events.
Ward 12 Alderman Sharon Tyus said the scale of destruction residents experienced still shapes daily life across the ward nearly a year later.
“We got money, but it takes time,” Tyus said.
Across Ward 12, visible reminders of the storm remain.
On the afternoon of May 16, Karen Baker, director of the Wm. G. Gillespie Village apartments at Labadie and Marcus avenues, heard a distant rumble and noticed the sky darkening.
After quickly helping several senior residents inside, Baker and others sheltered in a lobby enclave as what she described as a freight train-like roar swept through the neighborhood.
“It only lasted a couple minutes,” Baker said.
When residents emerged, they discovered the tornado had largely spared the senior complex but heavily damaged nearby homes and businesses. Across the street, the roof had been ripped from Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church and windows had been blown out. A nearby vehicle had been tossed onto an adjoining lot.
Residents rushed to help an elderly man and his granddaughter crawl from the car.
About two blocks east, destruction intensified.
Blue tarps still flap from rooftops along Labadie Avenue where homes remain severely damaged or abandoned.
Standing near the site where her family home once stood, Venessa Brown-Livingston tearfully described the loss of her mother, Catherine Brown.
“This is the first year, on Mother’s Day, of me being here without my mom,” Brown-Livingston said. “It just don’t feel good.”
Brown’s 83-year-old mother had been receiving hospice care at the family’s home near Cora and Labadie when the tornado struck and tore away part of the roof, trapping her beneath debris.
Police officers pulled her from the rubble, but she died several days later at a hospital.
Helen Layne — known throughout the Ville neighborhood as “Nurse Layne” — still remembers navigating downed power lines while trying to return home after the tornado.
Layne said blocked streets forced her to park near Martin Luther King Drive and walk nearly 10 blocks north along Marcus Avenue.
“I stepped and prayed,” she recalled.
Asked about the city’s recovery effort nearly a year later, Layne expressed frustration with the pace of rebuilding.
“I personally feel it hasn’t been productive,” she said. “It’s devastating what’s been going on in some of these neighborhoods with all this back-and-forth and so on.”
That bureaucratic back-and-forth became a defining frustration for many residents.
A review of correspondence obtained by St. Louis Public Radio documented months of communication among city officials, FEMA and other agencies as residents waited for debris removal, demolition approvals and recovery assistance.
Even after President Donald Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Missouri in July, many Ward 12 residents said progress remained painfully slow as damaged properties sat uncleared and families struggled to navigate overlapping recovery systems.
Former 4th Ward Alderman Edward McFarland, now a Ward 12 resident whose home sustained major roof damage, said he was denied FEMA assistance despite applying for multiple programs.
“I’ve been in this stuff too long,” McFarland said. “I wasn’t surprised they turned me down.”
Recovery delays also fueled what some residents described as a second recovery disaster.
Residents and community advocates said delays in basic stabilization efforts, especially roof tarping, allowed rainwater to pour into already damaged homes for weeks or months.
Repeated rainstorms festered a nasty spread of mold inside homes, worsened structural instability and increased interior damage — in some cases turning salvageable properties into demolitions.
Recovery was further complicated because many residents lacked insurance coverage before the tornado.
According to the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance, roughly 73% of homeowners in some of the hardest-hit North St. Louis neighborhoods were uninsured.
In March, city officials announced that full-scale repairs for tornado-damaged homes would likely not begin until mid-2027. Initial work planned for roughly 250 homes would focus primarily on stabilization rather than full restoration, according to Julian Nicks, director of the city’s Recovery Office.
Tyus said residents frustrated by the pace of rebuilding must also recognize the magnitude of the disaster and the years-long process likely required to restore entire neighborhoods.
“You had to get people from under bricks; you had to find places for them to live; you had to get electricity back on; you had to feed people,” Tyus said. “An ugly fact that people must face is this: we’re going to have to build whole new neighborhoods and that’s going to take time.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.