VIDEO: St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson will never forget May 16, 2025. It was a Friday around 3:15 p.m., meaning major roads in the city were already packed with traffic as rush hour approached. That would lead to even more issues down the road.
It was the day an EF-3 tornado struck the city of St. Louis and parts of St. Louis County, killing five and leaving behind miles of destruction. Jenkerson said the tornado tore through the central and north-central sections of the city and was on the ground for roughly 8 miles. The storm was anywhere from a mile to three-quarters of a mile wide and took out electrical substations, affecting between 8,500 and 10,000 homes before it crossed the river into Illinois.
As if the thought of rescue efforts wasn’t enough for first responders to ponder, they now had to deal with the issue of getting equipment into the affected areas because of congestion on major roads. “It was established fairly early on that this was a major event, that we had multiple homes involved. It kind of clipped the corner of where one of our major hospitals was located,” Jenkerson said. That hospital was the Barnes-Jewish Hospital, along with the children’s hospital.
