NEW ORLEANS ( AP) — One is a low-lying river city built on a swamp basin, a multicultural melting pot known the world over for legendary excesses, from lungsearing food to French Quarter flashers.

The other lies square in the buckle of the Bible Belt, an old Tornado Alley railroad hub best known as a Route 66 stopover for everyone from RV campers to the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.

With vastly different cultures and landscapes, it might seem on the surface that New Orleans and Joplin, Mo., have little in common. But as cities devastated by recent natural disasters — Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a historic Midwestern tornado 10 months ago — the two are forging an unlikely partnership that could change the way other American cities prepare for and recover from the next unexpected blow by nature.

“We both had natural disasters we didn’t ask for,” said Jerrod Hogan, a Joplin landscape surveyor. “And we both have folks in our communities who need help to get back to where things were.”

Hogan is among the founders of Rebuild Joplin, a nonprofit group formed after the May 22, 2011, twister that killed 161 people and destroyed 4,000 homes, many in the southwest Missouri city’s lowincome neighborhoods. The Joplin group recently returned from a 28-hour, 1,400- mile roundtrip bus ride to New Orleans, which endured a death toll nine times as large.

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