Without tornado warnings, death toll would have been higher

By David Zucchino

In southern Indiana, where tornadoes are all too common, many homes are equipped with special radios that emit a squawking alarm whenever the National Weather Service issues tornado watches or warnings.

Those radios, coupled with highly publicized alerts and warnings from the National Weather Service, may have helped save lives during punishing strikes by tornadoes that killed 14 people in Indiana on Friday.

"One death is too many,’’ Indiana State Police Sgt. Tony Slocum said by telephone from Indianapolis. "But if people hadn’t taken these warnings so seriously, we could’ve had a lot more."

In all, emergency management authorities said, 37 people were killed in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Alabama by a powerful storm system that spawned at least 90 tornadoes Friday.

The National Weather Service began issuing notices about possibly violent storms in the Midwest and South earlier in the week, said Toby TenHarmsel of the weather service's office in Louisville, Ky., which serves southern Indiana and central Kentucky.

Several hours before tornadoes began touching down, TenHarmsel said in an interview, tornado watches were issued in several counties. And within roughly 15 to 20 minutes of a tornado hitting a particular area, tornado warnings were issued.

"Most people were paying strict attention – they took it very seriously,’’ Slocum said, citing a history of tornadoes and violent thunderstorms in southern Indiana.

Schools, businesses and offices instituted evacuation plans. A high school in Henryville, Ind., which students and teachers had evacuated, was later demolished by a twister.

Even with warnings and precautions, some people did not survive. In the tiny town of Chelsea, for instance, four people died inside two houses a mile apart that were flattened by the same tornado.

"With a storm this devastating, unfortunately you can get casualties," even with the most careful precautions, Slocum said.

"We knew this was coming," Clarke County, Ind., Sheriff Danny Rodden told the Associated Press. "This was the worst-case scenario. There’s no way you can prepare for something like this."

Unlike hurricanes, where warnings are possible days in advance and entire towns can be evacuated, tornadoes are less predictable. Tornado warnings can be issued for a specific "polygon" – a shape on a map – down to perhaps a quarter-mile radius, TenHarmsel said, but tornadoes can shift paths from one moment to the next.

Massive storm systems like the one that roared across the Midwest and South on Friday are even more unpredictable.

"This was the worst system of storms we’ve had in many years,’’ TenHarmsel said. It was fueled by large masses of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico colliding with cooler air in the Midwest.

The weather service’s Louisville office issued 40 tornado warnings Friday, he said.

On Saturday, tornado warnings were in effect for parts of southern Georgia, the Florida Panhandle and central South Carolina. Tornado watches were in effect for larger areas of those three states.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told reporters outside the ruins of Henryville High School on Saturday that heeding warnings had saved lives.

Even so, he said, "All things that mere mortals can do aren’t enough sometimes."

Source:

LA Times