Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Does Anniston Alabama have a tornado safety plan other than going to the lowest floor in your house?
I have lived here all of my life and I don't know of one. This is a fairly strange thing, considering that nearby Jacksonville, AL serves as the hub of the local Emergency Management Agency.
It is a fact that everything changed after the Palm Sunday Tornado of 1994. I was there. Well, I wasn't at Goshen, thank God, but I was at the center of the information tornado, as I was in the control room of the local television station.
I had been looking at a lone little red blob of color that had been moving steadily northeast all morning on radar. I had a really bad feeling that morning. No reason really. There wasn't a single clue that the little red blob would decide to drop a tornado and kill a bunch of people above Piedmont. But something just didn't feel right.
When it happened, all hell broke loose. You see, it was such an oddball event that nobody who was supposed to be prepared...was prepared. In and out, down and up. Many dead.
After that, everything changed. That's when warning sirens popped up everywhere. Spann ascended at ABC3340, changing how weather was reported across all television stations in Alabama. The weather service turned their weather sensitivity knobs up so high that forevermore, they were seeing tornadoes in innocuous summer showers. You know how it is.
The one thing that didn't change was just what to do when a tornado sets its sights on you. You see, and will agree that it does absolutely no good to have a full day of warning if you have nowhere to go when a twister descends on you.
When even an EF1 tornado or strong straight line winds can and will kill you very dead, you have very little chance of survival when an F4 tears through where you are. The difference between an F4 and an F5 tornado is that an F4 leaves piles of rubble where homes were. An F5 leaves nothing...just a shadow or an empty cement pad.
The only way to successfully survive an F4 or and F5 tornado is to be several feet underneath the ground. Funny that. If you don't get underground when a large tornado hits, you will get underground after. One way, you will continue to breathe and enjoy life, and the other way you will not.
The problem for most of us is that "shelter in place" is not a good option during a tornado. The Cullman tornado demolished even strong, old, brick buildings.
We, or at least I, have always expected our city leaders, who are paid to do such things, to come up with places that we can go shelter when the weather turns bad. Then, the bad weather moves on along and the sun comes out, and nothing is ever done.
I believe there should be more options than "shelter and die in place."
I believe that if the people we pay to come up with alternate plans (as in whether we live or die) won't take care of business, then we, the Anniston and Oxford "street" should take care of it ourselves.
But first, we should finally, and once and for all ask the people who are in charge of public safety to step up to the challenge to identify and make available places for us to go when we know we're going to die if we don't.
I can personally think of two places that offer the chance for life that were padlocked on that recent and historical tornado day.
I'm not asking for the gubment to guarantee survival and sunny days. That is foolish. But what they could do is to put together a list of places that are survivable during a tornado and see to it that these places are made available...as in neighbor helping neighbor. A cooperation. A plan.
Identifying existing sites that can be used for storm shelters, making sure that they are open, and getting the plan in front of the citizens will cost little or nothing to implement, other than a little time.
The whole thing could be done by volunteers for that matter, if officially empowered.
I say, "Let's get to work."
I have lived here all of my life and I don't know of one. This is a fairly strange thing, considering that nearby Jacksonville, AL serves as the hub of the local Emergency Management Agency.
It is a fact that everything changed after the Palm Sunday Tornado of 1994. I was there. Well, I wasn't at Goshen, thank God, but I was at the center of the information tornado, as I was in the control room of the local television station.
I had been looking at a lone little red blob of color that had been moving steadily northeast all morning on radar. I had a really bad feeling that morning. No reason really. There wasn't a single clue that the little red blob would decide to drop a tornado and kill a bunch of people above Piedmont. But something just didn't feel right.
When it happened, all hell broke loose. You see, it was such an oddball event that nobody who was supposed to be prepared...was prepared. In and out, down and up. Many dead.
After that, everything changed. That's when warning sirens popped up everywhere. Spann ascended at ABC3340, changing how weather was reported across all television stations in Alabama. The weather service turned their weather sensitivity knobs up so high that forevermore, they were seeing tornadoes in innocuous summer showers. You know how it is.
The one thing that didn't change was just what to do when a tornado sets its sights on you. You see, and will agree that it does absolutely no good to have a full day of warning if you have nowhere to go when a twister descends on you.
When even an EF1 tornado or strong straight line winds can and will kill you very dead, you have very little chance of survival when an F4 tears through where you are. The difference between an F4 and an F5 tornado is that an F4 leaves piles of rubble where homes were. An F5 leaves nothing...just a shadow or an empty cement pad.
The only way to successfully survive an F4 or and F5 tornado is to be several feet underneath the ground. Funny that. If you don't get underground when a large tornado hits, you will get underground after. One way, you will continue to breathe and enjoy life, and the other way you will not.
The problem for most of us is that "shelter in place" is not a good option during a tornado. The Cullman tornado demolished even strong, old, brick buildings.
We, or at least I, have always expected our city leaders, who are paid to do such things, to come up with places that we can go shelter when the weather turns bad. Then, the bad weather moves on along and the sun comes out, and nothing is ever done.
I believe there should be more options than "shelter and die in place."
I believe that if the people we pay to come up with alternate plans (as in whether we live or die) won't take care of business, then we, the Anniston and Oxford "street" should take care of it ourselves.
But first, we should finally, and once and for all ask the people who are in charge of public safety to step up to the challenge to identify and make available places for us to go when we know we're going to die if we don't.
I can personally think of two places that offer the chance for life that were padlocked on that recent and historical tornado day.
I'm not asking for the gubment to guarantee survival and sunny days. That is foolish. But what they could do is to put together a list of places that are survivable during a tornado and see to it that these places are made available...as in neighbor helping neighbor. A cooperation. A plan.
Identifying existing sites that can be used for storm shelters, making sure that they are open, and getting the plan in front of the citizens will cost little or nothing to implement, other than a little time.
The whole thing could be done by volunteers for that matter, if officially empowered.
I say, "Let's get to work."
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