On May 16, 2025, an EF3 tornado tore through north St. Louis in minutes. It left behind a particular kind of wreckage that said something uncomfortable about the city it hit.

Of the more than 1,000 homes damaged to the point of needing demolition, an estimated 500 to 600 were known to be vacant — some long before the tornado touched down. An even higher number, around 1,407 that the city inspected for tornado damage, were believed to be either definitely or likely vacant.

The tornado didn’t create the vacancy problem. It just made it impossible to look away from.

North St. Louis has been losing population and buildings for decades. The tornado came through neighborhoods that were already missing chunks of themselves and took more. Then came the secondary problem: the Federal Emergency Management Agency won’t reimburse for the cost of demolishing most vacant buildings, leaving the future of the buildings and the north city neighborhoods in limbo.

There is something very St. Louis about this. The city has always had a complicated relationship with its own vacancy — the empty lots, the hollow buildings, the blocks where whole blocks used to be. The tornado didn’t change that. It just accelerated it, and then the paperwork stopped even that.

The people who were actually in those homes are still figuring out what comes next. So is everyone else.