How Joplin is faring month after killer twister

It's been one month now since the deadliest single tornado in six decades ravaged Joplin, Mo.

The storm killed 155 people and injured more than 1,000 others.

Joplin is now re-building.

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Mayor Mike Woolston said on "The Early Show" that things are actually going very well for the city.

He said, "Our citizens are very busy in the process of cleaning up the debris, and we're going about it day-by-day. We don't make too much progress each day. But each day we do make progress. We feel we're well under way to recovery."

Woolston said the city is working to get debris cleared and structures demolished so they can "get busy rebuilding the community."

As for St. John's Hospital, made iconic in the coverage of Joplin's disaster, Woolston said the structure could not be salvaged, and officials there are currently looking for another location in the Joplin area.

"They committed to rebuilding the hospital," he said. "... It will be somewhere here within the city."

Woolston gave credit to Sen. Roy Blunt, (R-Mo.) who he said has been helpful, asking the federal government to pick up the 10 percent of the clean-up the city would have had to pay.

Blunt, who also appeared on "The Early Show," said the effort to rebuild Joplin is happening because the people there are coming together to make it work. Blunt joined forces with former Missouri Sen. Jack Danforth to establish the Joplin Tomorrow Foundation. The pair set a $10 million goal for the city.

"The goal is Joplin tomorrow. It's not Joplin yesterday or even Joplin today," Blunt said. "It's trying to rebuild the business community and business opportunities by making low or no-interest loans available to business that wants to grow beyond their insurance coverage, a new business that wants to come in. It's to encourage those people that want to come back even stronger than they were or want to see the opportunity of the new Joplin and to come to Joplin and have access to some resources beyond what might normally be available to them."

Blunt said the community has already raised $1 million, with the first $500,000 of that amount coming from the last of the money from the now-defunct Danforth Foundation, a St. Louis based non-profit that ceased operation in January.

"Sen. Danforth has been such a great leader for our state for so long," Blunt said. "And by the way, Mike, the mayor, and the police chief, the city manager, the fire chief and everybody that works in the city and the county are doing a great job."

Co-anchor Chris Wragge noted, "In the immediate aftermath of the tornado, there was some initial resistance from some of the members of your party, Eric Cantor, in particular, about the federal funds that would be allocated to Joplin. Right now, where do you stand? I know the mayor mentioned the 10 percent cut that the city would have to pay, the federal government is picking up. How much additional money is being funneled towards the city and the rebuilding process?"

Blunt said, "Well, the initial offer from FEMA was, 'We'll pay the federal government will pay 75 percent and local governments will pay 25 percent of the cleanup efforts and the efforts that are part of getting Joplin back to where it can start to grow again.' We got that up to 90. I'd like to see them get it up to 100. I think Eric Cantor, who was my deputy when I was in the whip in the House said exactly the right thing, which is, 'We need to do this.' But we need to find savings to do this and everything else. We're spending too much money at the federal level. But if we're going to have FEMA, we have to be sure that FEMA has the resources to do its job. We need to figure out what we need to do well, rather than how many things we can do poorly."