[BC] Tornado hits ERI's old area

[Mike McCarthy]

That's what I've been seeing too.  The damage is consistent with a strong 
F-2 or F-3 thresholds.  There may be small areas where the damage 
approaches F-4 if the structures were better built than trailer/mobile 
homes.  But I've not yet seen any indication of that type of wind being 
present.

Well...the reality is that even 11 minutes probably would not have been 
sufficient for residents to even reach a storm shelter at that time of 
day.  Being woken in the middle of the night, most people are groggy for a 
few minutes, need to get some clothes on, then run to the shelter. Staying 
put was probably the best thing for them.  If they were outside at the 
moment of strike, they would have no doubt been killed. Either way, those 
that died were in a no-win scenario. Can you imagine a whole subdivision of 
people running to a shelter only to be broadside hit enmasse?

The reality is mobile home parks should be required to have storm rated 
shelters within 300 ft. of every home in the park.  Not one for the whole 
park which may be blocks away.

MM



At 10:23 AM 11/7/2005 -0500, Phil Alexander wrote
>On 7 Nov 2005 at 8:04, Mike McCarthy wrote:
>
> > Problem is the CO switch probably could not handle tens of thousands of
> > calls at once. Limited call outs like the FD example are limited to maybe
> > 100 calls.  Then comes the who gets called first and how that is 
> determined
> > on less than a few seconds questions.
> >
> > I'll be really interested in reading NOAA's disaster assessment report to
> > see just how much time passed between when the WSR88D near Evansville
> > detected the TVS, when the warnings were issued, when the first spottings
> > occurred/reported (which is really hard to do at night) and when
> > the  tornado actually touched down.
> >
> > Sirens are still the best way to do warnings. Problem is they are genrally
> > spaced too far apart to be effective.  Anything more than a couple blocks
> > and with newer homes being so well insulated, their wail doesn't penetrate
> > walls as well as before.
>
>According to the Vanderburg Co. Sheriff, the warning time was 11 minutes
>but the principal problem was it came at 3 AM. The "mobile" home park where
>19 of the victims died (the present total is said to be 23 but may climb)
>was in a rural area with no available shelter nearby.
>
>Essentially, what the Sheriff said was these people had no safe place
>nearby to seek shelter.
>
>The footage I saw showed a swath across one part of a flat area cleaned
>down to the concrete pads, with untouched double-wides and manufactured
>housing on similar pads elsewhere. Unofficially, it has been reported as
>an F3 with confirmation of that expected to come today. It is clear that
>this was an extremely strong tornado, especially for this time of year
>and hour of the night. Nothing above ground was safe from its path.
>
>In this situation, it appears the only action the residents might have
>taken was to get in their cars and drive away, so it may not have been
>so much a matter of warning as a matter of the time it hit and the limited
>shelter and/or escape routes. Preliminary reports on Indianapolis TV, where
>the story has been heavily covered as a "local" story, indicated residents
>received the warning, and followed directions to shelter in the interior,
>IOW bathrooms, of the mobile homes/manufactured housing, but that did not
>provide adequate shelter for those in the middle of the storm track.
>
>Looking at the footage of the aftermath, it is rather clear that only
>evacuation would have been lifesaving given the circumstances of storm
>intensity and available shelter.
>
>
>Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
>Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology
>(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation)
>Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037
>
>
>
>
>
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