The state senate has found 15-million unused dollars to give to Joplin for tornado recovery almost two years after the town was devastated. Joplin has received little state money since the immediate cleanup from the May 2011 tornado.  But it needs some state help now, and Sen. John Lamping (R-St. Louis) is sponsoring the bill that would provide it.

AUDIO: Lamping

That’s more than 14 miles of curbs and gutters.

The Senate Majority Floor Leader is Ron Richard, who lives in Joplin and who knows other places might need similar disaster assistance in the future.

AUDIO: Richard

Lamping’s bill harvest surplus money from four state funds or accounts.  But the bill has been changed so other disaster cities can get help in later years. St. Joseph Senator Rob Schaaf comes from an area devastated by floods the same year Joplin had its tornado.

AUDIO: Schaaf

The proposal ready to be sent to the House is considered a template for response to cities affected by future disasters.

Adam Long has been installed as the University City Fire Chief.

Long is a former St. Louis firefighter who was the subject of a 1989 Pulitizer Prize winning photograph shot by freelance photographer Ron Olshwanger.

Long says he is still humbled by the photo, which shows him giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to an unresponsive 2-year-old girl, Patricia Pettus, as he rushes her from a burning apartment in St. Louis. Despite his heroic efforts, Pettus later died at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The photo, which ran in the Post-Dispatch the day after the fire, won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography in 1989.

Long received a Medal of Honor for his efforts, but told The St. Louis Post Dispatch he didn’t feel very heroic.

“For about a year, I second-guessed myself: ‘Did you really do all that you could have done?’” Long said. He says to him, she is the hero because more than 20 years later, “people are going out and buying smoke detectors because of what they see in that photo.”

Read the full article HERE.

The Public Service Commission has five investigators looking for the cause of this week’s fatal natural gas explosion that destroyed a nightclub.  The PSC sends investigators to every significant natural gas incident, even if there’s no explosion such as the one that killed one person, injured fifteen others, and caused widespread damage near the Country Club Plaza district. 

Commission Chairman Kevin Gunn says the investigators will spend weeks on a detailed investigation.  A major focus is on the possibility of human error. “The first thing you look for is to make sure this wasn’t a failure of infrastructure…This looks like contractor error,” he says. But he says there are numerous other issues that need to be part of a final report. 

Gunn says contractors are required ahead of excavations to see if the lines had been marked and marked correctly.  Investigators will be checking to see if that contractor had made the proper call.

Gunn says a final report will take two or three months to finish maybe longer.

AUDIO: Gunn interview