The southwest Missouri town devastated Sunday by a powerful tornado that killed over 100 people and battered the town’s hospital needs help.

The University of Michigan Health System is answering the call.

“The images and stories from Joplin, Missouri are heartbreaking - an entire city and its hospital decimated by a tornado, patients and medical staff evacuated, the hospital’s helicopter in wreckage on the lawn,” wrote Tony Denton, the executive director of University Hospitals, in an e-mail to all UMHS faculty and staff sent this afternoon.

In the e-mail, Denton announced a partnership with the American Red Cross will allow UMHS volunteers to go on 10-day deployments beginning in June to help with nursing, medical oversight and behavioral health services in mass care shelters in the town of 50,000. He asked for volunteers.

Media reports indicate the tornado killed five patients at St. John's Regional Medical Center. The facility sustained so much damage it may not be salvageable.

More than 1,000 are still missing in the city struck by the most destructive twister on record since weather service recordkeeping began in 1950, the Associated Press reported. Scientists told the AP it appeared to be a “multivortex” tornado, a rare occurrence in which the tornado has two or more small and intense centers of rotation orbiting the larger funnel, the AP reported.

Volunteers from UMHS will receive training from the Washtenaw County chapter of the American Red Cross before they go, Denton wrote.

“We can only imagine what it was like to be inside the St. John’s Regional Health Center when the tornado struck,” Denton wrote. “We hope that our medical campus will never endure a similar incident. But, we must always be ready for the worst-case scenario.”

Denton also suggested other ways to help with disaster relief for Joplin and other southern cities devastated by tornadoes in recent weeks, including donating to the Red Cross or AmeriCares Foundation.

Other groups including the Salvation Army, World Vision and the United Way are also assisting survivors of all the tragic events of recent weeks, Denton said.

Denton encouraged faculty and staff to donate blood.

Media reports say 750 were injured in Joplin and many residents are unaccounted for, though officials told the AP today media reports that 1,500 people are missing does not mean those individuals are injured or deceased.

Juliana Keeping covers general assignment and health and the environment for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at julianakeeping@annarbor.com or 734-623-2528. Follow Juliana Keeping on Twitter