Emergency communication system
161 people were killed and at least 990 injured when an EF5 multiple-vortex tornado hit Joplin, Missouri. Because Joplin is located in a tornado-heavy area of the country, many people considered the tornado sirens routine and ignored them. Instead, many residents waited until they received confirmation from another, non-routine, source, such as seeing the tornado, a radio or TV report, or hearing a second siren. In the aftermath, an assessment team recommended that emergency warnings take risk perception into account to convey a sense of urgency. NOAA Officials are considering ways to change the warning system to distinguish smaller tornadoes from more deadly ones.
2011 Joplin tornado
The catastrophe and risk modeling firm Eqecat, Inc. has estimated the damage at one billion to three billion USD, but noted that the true damage is not yet known, since the firm does not have access to data on uninsured losses. More than 19,000 insurance claims had been filed by mid-June. The impact on the insurance industry is not so much the number of claims, but the cumulative effect of such a large number of total losses. More than 2500 local people employed in insurance have been involved in some capacity. It is assumed that State Farm will assume the largest share of these losses, having market share of 27% for homeowners insurance and 21% for automobile insurance.