Most of the debris removal from the St. Louis tornado has been stalled for almost a year as city officials waited for clear marching orders from federal and state partners, and after a federal agency denied assistance that would have sped up the process significantly.
St. Louis Public Radio obtained more than two dozen documents that shed light on the painfully slow recovery that has left residents living amid debris. The documents focus on work on private property, which makes up the majority of the tornado debris and is potentially covered by the federal government.
A long paper trail among St. Louis, the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency shows months of back-and-forth requests for more help, clarity and time.
Meanwhile, buildings that needed to come down stayed up, and piles of debris sat on private properties. Residents like Tracey Dickerson in the Academy/Sherman Park neighborhood have been left worried about the future of the community.
"The pace at which they help us to clean up and rebuild is going to mean everything for the neighborhood because if you take too long, people are going to leave," Dickerson said.
Who is most at fault for the wasted time is not clear. Each party, at times, spent weeks and sometimes months before responding to questions or taking necessary action.
Months passed between requests to FEMA and the agency's responses. St. Louis didn't take action while waiting to find out what their responsibilities would be. And the state emergency agency lost significant time as it developed and fulfilled contracts to do debris work.
What is clear is that, in the past 10 months, local officials repeatedly said they did not have the experience or the resources to handle a project of this size, but it still fell on their plate despite pleas for help from federal agencies.
FEMA did not reply to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Here's a timeline of how those months passed with little progress.
June: Getting yes
President Donald Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Missouri, unlocking federal resources for recovery.
July: Not getting started
A disaster declaration is not a guarantee that FEMA will cover work on private property, but St. Louis officials quickly thought the city needed help.
Disaster recovery experts told STLPR that because FEMA now largely does reimbursements, the best practice is to start work, aggressively document it and hope to be reimbursed later. FEMA documents also say that applicants don't need pre-approval to do private property debris removal. But St. Louis' ability to do that was limited by the size and complexity of the disaster and city officials' lack of experience with something like an EF3 tornado.
Mayor Cara Spencer recently told STLPR that the city immediately activated city departments to clear roads and remove debris, but the private property work was another story.
"Much of the delay has been in debris removal on private property and rebuilding and repairing structures," Spencer said. "We had no delay on our end on getting the immediate response taken care of."
On July 8, St. Louis asked for a private property debris removal mission from FEMA.
Three days later, Spencer and St. Louis Chief Recovery Officer Julian Nicks told FEMA they wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to handle that work.
Spencer and Nicks said the city couldn't handle the project in a letter to Missouri's emergency management agency, which routes requests to FEMA for the city.
"The incident of May 16, 2025, is on a scale comparable to the 2011 Missouri Joplin tornado, and the City does not have the capacity or expertise to execute a recovery effort of this magnitude," Spencer and Nicks wrote.
Spencer and Nicks also gave a warning — the Army Corps could finish the project as early as March 2026, but if the city and state had to handle the project, it would add more than a year and a half to the timeline.
"This timeline poses a threat to the health and safety of citizens," Spencer and Nicks wrote.
August: Hopes pinned to the Army Corps
All of Missouri's U.S. senators and representatives also wanted the Army Corps to step in. On Aug. 1, they sent a letter to the acting FEMA administrator urging him to immediately approve Spencer's request for the Army Corps to do the work.
"If approved, this mission would unlock USACE's unmatched staff, expertise, capacity, and equipment to support state and local efforts to remove debris, protect public health and safety, and support economic recovery," the 10-person congressional delegation wrote.
A month had passed since the city requested the debris removal mission. On Aug. 4, Recovery Division Manager Ron Broxton of Missouri's SEMA submitted a resource request form to ask FEMA to activate the Army Corps to provide coordination and execution of debris removal.
The Army Corps gave Broxton a description of what their assistance would entail: an estimated timeline of eight months for the project at a cost of $725 million, which would be shared by FEMA and the state.
The Army Corps was getting ready to do the work, the acting chief of public affairs for the St. Louis District of the corps, Brooke Magary, told STLPR on Aug. 13.
"We are also separately doing internal preparations to identify and alert the teams and personnel who would support this mission, so work can begin as quickly as possible if the city's request is ultimately approved," Magary said.
But Magary said the request was ultimately up to FEMA and Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security at the time.
September: Corps out, state in
On Sept. 17, FEMA told Missouri officials that the request to have the Army Corps handle the mission was not approved, in a letter from FEMA Region 7 administrator Catherine Sanders to SEMA Director James Remillard.
To justify the decision, he wrote that the debris mission was smaller than originally estimated and "to date, the State of Missouri and the City of St. Louis have been effectively leading the management and execution of the recovery efforts."
The next day, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced that FEMA had partially said yes to the private property debris removal mission by agreeing to cover 75% of the costs of the work, but denying the request to deploy the Army Corps.
Kehoe said the state would hire and oversee the project's contractors, with St. Louis handling the legal rights to enter the private properties. The Army Corps would provide limited technical assistance.
At the time, Spencer said FEMA's commitment to the project was "great news." She thought the state's involvement would speed up the process.
"I do think we're going to see some movement here in the coming weeks," she said.
But recently, Spencer told STLPR it was also disappointing, especially after an almost two-month wait for clarity.
"It was our hope through that time to have the Army Corps of Engineers run that project," Spencer said. "And that's part of the reason why we didn't get that work project going."
More than four months after the tornado hit St. Louis, on Sept. 29, FEMA created the project in its portal.
October: Asking for more time
On Oct. 1, a federal government shutdown began, potentially limiting FEMA's ability to do its work.
Internal logs from FEMA's project portal show the private property debris project went through more than 30 steps in October, including many layers of review and cost development.
A month after learning it was their job, on Oct. 21, St. Louis officials opened a private property assistance application to begin collecting rights of entry from impacted property owners.
Meanwhile, Spencer and Nicks wrote to the state emergency agency asking for a six-month extension to complete FEMA projects related to emergency work, like debris removal.
The first reason they listed for needing an extension was the long wait to understand who would do the work on private property: the city, the state or the Army Corps.
November: The plan forms
On Nov. 4, FEMA officially approved the private property debris removal project, changing its status to obligated in its portal.
Eight days later, the federal government shutdown ended.
The state shared an official work outline with St. Louis officials on Nov. 21: The project would include demolishing 1,000 private property homes, hauling away the resulting debris and removing hazardous materials such as asbestos.
December: Pausing again for questions
But FEMA's outline raised "several outstanding questions," according to a Dec. 8 letter from Spencer and Nicks to FEMA that was routed through the state.
Spencer and Nicks wanted clarification on the definition of private property homes, and whether certain buildings would qualify, like small commercial buildings or ones that were vacant or condemned.
Due to the ongoing confusion about what FEMA would reimburse, the city did not begin doing demolition and debris removal work, according to Nicks.
"We only want to use state dollars and city dollars where FEMA dollars won't come into play," Nicks said.
Also in early December, Missouri's SEMA approved a six-month extension for St. Louis to do emergency projects related to the tornado.
January: Help wanted
In early January, Missouri started looking for someone to do the work and posted a request for proposals for demolition and debris removal contractors. Almost three weeks later, the state put out another request for proposals for a technical monitor to oversee the project.
STLPR asked the state why it took four months from FEMA approving the mission to get to this step.
In response, Missouri's Office of Administration and SEMA said the federal involvement added more layers and time to the state's already rigorous process.
The agencies also said in the rare cases when FEMA approves private property work, the Army Corps commonly handles procurement.
"This is the first time that the State of Missouri has been responsible for procuring the demolition and debris removal services directly," the agencies said. "The Office of Administration and SEMA believe that the procurement has been completed in a timely fashion and in coordination with the City of St. Louis' right-of-entry collection and review efforts."
February: Denied demolitions
More than two months after St. Louis asked for clarity, FEMA said it would not cover demolishing the majority of tornado-damaged buildings. The city crunched the numbers and found that of the 1,166 potential private demolitions related to the tornado, more than 900 would not be eligible for the FEMA project.
On Feb. 14, a partial government shutdown began, affecting the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA.
At the end of the month, the bid process for the state contractors closed, and the state issued awards. Missouri chose three contractors for demolition and debris removal: Aftermath Disaster Recovery Inc., AME JV LLC and Ceres Environmental Services. Thompson Consulting Services, LLC will handle monitoring and management services.
March: St. Louis starts some work
The state finalized the private property debris removal contractors after the bid-protest period closed.
Ten months after the tornado, the city finally has clarity and is moving forward with demolition and debris work. In that time, the city says it demolished about 40 homes.
On March 20, the city began to demolish the homes it knew would not be covered by FEMA, starting with a tornado-damaged home in the Academy/Sherman Park. Neighbor June Lipscomb said the home had been unoccupied for years, and she celebrated the demo.
"I'm like, 'Man, 'I'm hoping this house is on the list to get torn down,'" Lipscomb said. "'I'm hoping it gets torn down.' And, you know, it finally came."
April: Ramping up?
Missouri has not yet begun demolishing tornado-damaged homes, but SEMA told STLPR that the work is "anticipated to begin" in April. A spokesperson would not give a timeline for completion of the project.
"Completion of [Private Property Debris Removal] will be contingent on a few factors, including the quantity of approved buildings and weather permitting conditions to conduct the work," the agency said.
The spokesperson also said the city has until May 1 to submit Right of Entry forms. The more FEMA-eligible forms submitted, the longer it will take to finish the work.
City officials said their work targeting buildings that are not part of the state project would ramp up in April as well. Spencer told a gathering of tornado survivors at a tornado resource fair on March 17 that now that temperatures are warming up and marching orders are clear, progress will be visible.
But she hesitated to make a clear promise on timing, saying at the one-year mark of the tornado, people would see "much more progress starting."
For many in the tornado zone, it can't come fast enough.
Andrea Henderson and Kavahn Mansouri contributed to this report.
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