Construction of Anti-Tornado Super Hospital Underway in Joplin

JOPLIN, Mo. — A lot of unpredictable things happened Sunday, May 22, 2011 in Joplin, Mo. Tornadoes are a part of life in certain sections of the U.S., but no one outside of a movie theater expects to see the strongest level of twister (EF5) drop down directly on a town and disintegrate buildings that were designed with severe weather in mind.

St. John’s Regional Medical Center was built to weather extreme storms, but no one anticipated it would take a direct hit from the strongest tornado possible. Five patients died when the power went out, causing ventilators to fail, and one visitor died from injuries suffered at some point during the storm. The 40-year-old building performed well enough for over 100 staff members to evacuate 200 patients in 90 minutes, but the tragic deaths left administrators wanting something more from their next facility.

Officials at the hospital, which has changed names to Mercy Hospital Joplin, are working on a new structure designed to raise the standards of storm-proof hospitals to the next level. The 875,000-square-foot facility will feature nine floors and 260 beds, coming at a price tag of $350 million. The project was designed by Dallas-based HKS, in collaboration with Archimages, out of St. Louis.

McCarthy Building, based in St. Louise, serves as construction manager for the construction of the new hospital and also oversaw the project that gave Mercy a temporary hospital that is currently providing services to patients. The 150,000-square-foot temporary hospital was built out of modular components manufactured by Walden Structures, based in Mentone, Calif. The project represents the largest acute-care facility ever built using the modular construction process and is twice as large as anything Walden has ever assembled before.

The new facility will feature a central utility plant, with backup generators, housed outside of the hospital and surrounded by a hardened exterior. Utility lines will be housed in a 12-foot by 12-foot underground tunnel. Fuel for the generators will also be stored underground. Empire District Electric Co. will construct a new substation nearby, giving the hospital another source of energy.

The two lowest floors of the new structure will be built underground, housing 14 operating rooms shielded by concrete walls. Engineers noticed that most of the windows at the old hospital shattered, while the laminated shatterproof glass in the psychiatric unit survived intact. That material will be used in all the windows for the new hospital.

The new facility will feature a concrete roof and a brick or precast stone exterior, replacing plaster walls and a metal decking roof from the pervious hospital. The structure, which constitutes the largest single building project in Joplin’s history, will include 5,500 tons of structural steel. The project will employ 600 people when construction efforts hit their peak of activity in the summer of 2014.

Tate Jacobitz, project director for McCarthy, explained the complex emotions in working on a project that resulted from a tragedy, with the hopes of preventing another.

“You hope this project is one in a career,” he said, “I can’t think of a better reminder of why we’re all here — to serve the community. There was excitement and force behind us to all pull together and get this hospital back on its feet.”