Survivors Cower as New Storm Brews but Passes

Patrick Fallon for The New York TimesBrie Watson, a nurse, directed people to the stairwells as they moved to the basement of the Red Cross shelter at the Missouri Southern State University gymnasium on Tuesday night as another storm passed nearby.

JOPLIN, Mo. — As rescue workers continue to sift through the wreckage of this city piece by piece, hoping to unearth survivors and victims of a lethal tornado, local leaders have been wrestling with the difficult question of when to start cleaning up the destroyed area.

TimesCast | Search Continues in Joplin

They know that ultimately they must sweep away what the storm did not.

But so far the word bulldoze is one that they have been hesitant to use in news conferences, as rescue and recovery efforts continue. But they acknowledge that it is only a matter of time before the battered and blown-down houses, which cover an area stretching more than a half-mile wide and six miles long, have to be stripped to their foundations and hauled away.

Standing in a wreckage-strewn park across from a hospital that is now only a concrete shell, the mayor pro tem, Melodee Colbert-Kean, said that officials understood the need to be careful about how fast they moved forward. In addition to the considerable logistical challenges, there are the emotional considerations imbued in the splintered lumber, crushed brick and strewn personal possessions — as well as the remains of the missing.

“To a lot of people, it’s just rubble,” she said. “But to a whole bunch more, it’s lives.”

That rubble was once assembled neatly into more than 5,000 buildings stretching through nearly a third of the city. Now it is where at least 125 people died, the most in a single tornado since modern record-keeping began in the United States in 1950. It is a rolling junkyard presided over by the jagged forms of denuded trees. The mess revealed a prosthetic leg, a college thesis, a live guinea pig, an empty wheelchair, a pocket watch, and a child’s doll.

Still, even residents of the hardest-hit area seemed to carry a gloomy resignation about what was surely ahead. “What else can you do but bulldoze it?” said Anna Kent, 54, as she wandered through rubble that once was a friend’s home in search of missing items. “They ought to draw a perimeter around all of it and take it all. What else can you do?”

After days exposed to the constant rain, these piles already smelled of mold. Nails and other sharp objects tore through tires and shoes alike. Even so, residents continued to stay in the damaged area, along with looters seeking both precious and scrap metal, and gawkers who have slowed emergency vehicles by creating traffic jams.

No new bodies or survivors were found Wednesday after the debris was searched a third time, said Mark Rohr, the city manager. City officials said that local leaders were already talking to the Army Corps of Engineers coming into the area to clear it of the wreckage, though it remained unclear where such a massive amount of material would go. Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri said he waived certain restrictions to speed the clean-up effort.

As they talk of tearing down they are also discussing efforts to rebuild the area, with City Council members even discussing whether to change the zoning in certain areas to better reflect the development of this mostly blue-collar city of 49,000 in southwest Missouri. “We’re getting ready to have some lengthy City Council meetings,” said Gary Shaw, a city councilor and former mayor.

For many residents, imagining a rebuilt Joplin was too much, too fast. Yes, they said, Joplin will surely remake itself and people will build new homes and businesses. But, at the moment, the thought of a reshaped city felt faraway, said Kenny McGoyne, who was trying to find what was left of the bunk beds and chairs beneath his crumbled business, Kenny’s Used Furniture Emporium. “In a way, the place is already bulldozed,” he said. “I don’t know where we’ll go.”

Meanwhile, city officials were trying to find ways to manage access to the destroyed area. Law enforcement officials were posted at major intersections to keep people from entering, an effort that leaders said was aimed at preventing looting and gawking. A curfew was also put into effect restricting access after dark.

Monica Davey contributed reporting.

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Signs Grow That Palin May Run

While it is by no means clear that she would be willing to give up her lucrative speaking career and her perch as an analyst on Fox News to face the scrutiny and combat that would come with her entrance into the race, she is being pressed by supporters for a decision and has acknowledged that time is running out.

Two people familiar with the details of the real estate transaction said that Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, have bought a $1.7 million house in Scottsdale, Ariz. Like others interviewed for this article, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger the Palins, who have become especially protective of their privacy in the maelstrom that has followed them since 2008. The Arizona Republic reported over the weekend on speculation in Scottsdale that the Palins were the buyers of the house, reporting the purchase was through a shell company that hid their identity.

While Arizona would be a more convenient travel hub for a presidential campaign than Alaska, there are other reasons the Palins might want a house there. Their daughter Bristol recently bought a house in Maricopa, which is near Scottsdale.

Ms. Palin has reshuffled her staff, rehiring two aides who have helped plan her political events. And she is expected to resume a schedule of public appearances soon — perhaps as early as this weekend — to raise her profile at a moment when the Republican presidential field appears to be taking final form.

The drumbeat intensified on Tuesday night when the conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon was quoted on RealClearPolitics, a political news site, as saying that he was releasing a feature film he made with Ms. Palin’s acquiescence about her tenure as governor of Alaska. The film is to be shown next month in Iowa, whose caucuses open the nominating contest.

Taken together, the moves are at odds with conventional wisdom — if not wishful thinking — among establishment Republicans in Washington that Ms. Palin has decided not to run. That thinking has been voiced increasingly as the party’s professional political class, which Ms. Palin has railed against, has sought to declare the field of candidates closed.

Ms. Palin would undoubtedly be able to raise substantial campaign financing and attract constant media attention if she ran. But she is a divisive figure in the party, and would have to overcome what polls have consistently suggested is skepticism and even opposition to her among some fellow Republicans.

Still, supporters of Ms. Palin say that her constituency beyond the Beltway remains eager, and aides and associates have said she is receptive to their calls of “Run, Sarah, run.”

“All indications are that she will be in — her supporters have an intuition about it,” said Jeff Jorgensen, chairman of the Republican Party of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where Ms. Palin came in second in a straw poll last week. “People are looking for somebody, a Ronald Reagan reincarnate, who does not seem to be out there yet.”

If she were to enter the race, Ms. Palin would draw significant attention in a field that now features three other former governors — Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota — and a smattering of other hopefuls, including Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

None of the likely and declared candidates have fully galvanized the Tea Party activists who form the core of Ms. Palin’s support.

When asked about her deliberations, Ms. Palin’s aides have pointed to recent televised interviews that they said were indicative of her thinking.

“I want to make sure that we have a candidate out there with Tea Party principles,” she told the Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity last week.

“We have got to have faith that the Republican Party is going to surface somebody who can take on both sides of the aisle,” she said on Fox Business Network.

Raising concerns about “sacrifices that have to be made on my children’s part,” she nonetheless told the Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren, “I have that fire in my belly.”

All of that said, Ms. Palin has shown that she is able to command maximum media attention when she wants it, and her book sales and public speaking fees depend to some degree upon her stature as a possible national leader.

Some of the staff changes she has made also serve the interests of her one-woman media conglomerate. In February, she hired a new chief of staff, Michael Glassner, a former adviser to Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, a step that sent the blogosphere buzzing that she would soon enter the race. But Ms. Palin is busy enough that she needs such a chief of staff in any case.

She recently parted ways with a communications aide, Michael Goldfarb, and with her foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who is often tied to the neoconservative movement, bringing in a less hawkish adviser, Peter Schweizer. After dismissing two aides, Jason Recher and Doug McMarlin, who worked in the White House for President George W. Bush, she has recently rehired them.

And one of her advisers, Rebecca A. Mansour, had an embarrassing moment this week when the conservative political Web site The Daily Caller published messages she wrote to an online friend that included, among other things, criticism of Ms. Palin’s daughter Bristol. Ms. Palin’s aides have acknowledged that she will need a more disciplined operation if she pursues the presidency. But they have also said that in contrast with other hopefuls, she still has time to achieve that, because her network of supporters can be activated almost instantly.

Ms. Palin has identified the first filing deadlines to qualify for state primary and caucus ballots, telling Ms. Van Susteren, “that’s what will dictate my decision and my announcement.” The first of those deadlines do not arise until the fall, but meeting them can require arduous work that cannot start in earnest without a formal declaration.

Ryan Rhodes, a leader of the Tea Party movement in Iowa, said state voters expect candidates to invest real time there. A Tea Party bus tour through the state in June, Mr. Rhodes said, would be an ideal place for her to demonstrate her seriousness. “She’ll be on the top of a lot of people’s minds,” he said.

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from Washington, and Marc Lacey from Scottsdale, Ariz.

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Maria Sharapova Extends Her Reach

“And do you think I knew what Sports Illustrated was?” Ms. Sharapova said recently, recalling the moment when her agent, Max Eisenbud, first showed her the magazine, expecting her to be as excited as he was. “I knew what Vogue was, but I didn’t know what Sports Illustrated was.”

Ms. Sharapova, over coffee at a SoHo hotel last month, laughed at herself, saying, “When you are young, you are a little naïve.”

But you had to wonder: Was Maria Sharapova really all that naïve?

One does not become the highest paid female athlete in the world without recognizing that the greatest potential for earnings comes not from winning championships, but from endorsement deals, particularly with fashion and sportswear brands. Ms. Sharapova, now 24 years old and the seventh ranked women’s singles player, made $24.5 million from June 2009 to June 2010, according to Forbes, about $4 million more than her nearest competitor, Serena Williams.

Last year, she renewed her contract with Nike in an expanded eight-year deal that is estimated to be worth as much as $70 million, the most ever for a female athlete, including royalties from clothes she designs for Nike. She also designs shoes and handbags for Cole Haan and endorses luxury brands like Tiffany and Tag Heuer, and the electronics company Sony Ericsson.

Expanding her reach into the unexpected, she is about to announce a new partnership with Jeff Rubin, the man who helped create Dylan’s Candy Bar in 2001 and a chain of candy shops inside F. A. O. Schwarz stores (called F. A. O. Schweetz) in the 1990s, to develop her own brand of candy and sweets. Gumballs will be shaped like tennis balls, and gummy candies will be packaged in containers shaped like tennis-ball cans, according to plans drawn up by Mr. Rubin, who hopes to have them ready in time for a rollout at the United States Open in August.

The name of her brand? Sugarpova.

Despite recent progress in her professional comeback, which has been regarded somewhat skeptically since a shoulder operation in 2008 took her out of the game for most of a year, Ms. Sharapova is laying the groundwork for what her life will be like after tennis. Ever the ferocious (and vocal) competitor, her victory on a clay court at the Italian Open in Rome on May 15 may have set up a possible storyline for a Sharapova revival, as she entered the French Open this week as one of the tournament’s favorites.

But it is her competitiveness off the court that has made for a more riveting match in recent years, as Ms. Sharapova fights for turf among those athletes who aspire to become brands — pushing both Nike and Cole Haan to produce more of her designs, creating the candy business and now expanding her online presence with a Facebook page with 4.3 million fans. (That’s more than any other female athlete has, she pointed out.)

As she walked past the suits sitting at the white-linen-covered tables of the restaurant in the Trump SoHo hotel, in a loose, black-and-white flecked halter top and high-waisted black trousers that made her look even taller than her 6 feet 2 inches, a few early-morning diners looked up from their plates. Model? Actress? It was a few moments before her name could be recognized among their whispers. She hardly seemed to notice the attention, but then it would take a lot more than that to break Ms. Sharapova’s focus.

“I’ve been very competitive by nature from a young age, whether it was eating a bowl of pasta faster than somebody else, or always wanting to be the first one in line,” she said. When she was 13, training on scholarship at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Fla., a reporter from “HBO Real Sports” asked her if she had the chance to win Wimbledon or make $20 million in endorsements, which would she choose? She looked into the camera and said, without hesitation, “I would choose to win Wimbledon, because then the millions will come.”

Retelling the story, Ms. Sharapova said: “I looked at the guy — and I remember this — I thought to myself, ‘Are you stupid? Maybe I’m not getting things. How could he even ask me this question. You can’t buy Wimbledon. It’s not purchasable. You have to earn Wimbledon. Second of all, if you win Wimbledon, of course you are going to get this money. I mean, it’s Wimbledon.’ I’m thinking this and then I find myself saying this — not the first part, not the fact he is asking me a stupid question — but the second part that, of course, if you win Wimbledon, then the money is going to come. Looking back on that, I thought, ‘God, I had guts. I was brave to say that.’ ”

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