Deadly Garland Tornado Caught on Traffic Cameras

[Randy Jennings]

Multiple traffic cameras on the George Bush Turnpike captured the 12/26/2015 tornado that killed 8 people in Garland, TX when their cars where blown off I-30. Video at: http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Deadly-Garland-Tornado-Caught-on-NTTA-Cameras--364438111.html

 

[Alex Heimberger]

Intense footage! Especially traffic cam around 4:50 in video. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Robert Forry]

That was insane!

 

[Marc R. O'Leary]

Geez...the cam at 6:00 or so looks like a war started.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

@Connor McCrorey posted some crazy video from the NTTA cams showing where he was in relation to the tornado. Close call! Glad he was alright

 

[David Reimer]

It sounds like all nine fatalities from the Garland tornado were from vehicles in that area. Honestly I'm amazed that there was no loss of life in structures. The Integrated Warning Team worked well that night but obviously we need to improve the message to motorists. The tornado was clearly visible thanks to dozens of transformer explosions. A tornado warning was in effect for at least ten minutes and anyone with a smartphone would have been notified via WEA. Just imagine what the death toll would have been if it was a regular evening commute. That stretch of I-30 and the PGBT would have been bumper to bumper.

 

[James Wilson]

It sounds like all nine fatalities from the Garland tornado were from vehicles in that area. Honestly I'm amazed that there was no loss of life in structures. The Integrated Warning Team worked well that night but obviously we need to improve the message to motorists. The tornado was clearly visible thanks to dozens of transformer explosions. A tornado warning was in effect for at least ten minutes and anyone with a smartphone would have been notified via WEA. Just imagine what the death toll would have been if it was a regular evening commute. That stretch of I-30 and the PGBT would have been bumper to bumper.

The problem was it was after dark and most drivers are concentrating on what they can see from their headlights in front of them ... too worried about deer and the like even in an urban area. The only real way to help them is the way we already have in place the radio ... most people listen to the radio and I am sure the radio was warning people. I would hope, as is the case in Kansas City, (Lee Summitt Tornado for example this year) they gave location and roads impacted by the tornadoes projected path ... if not that is a problem for another day.

 

[rdale]

Actually I don't think most people listen to news radio during a tornado warning. As David noted - WEA did notify all cell phone owners in the path of the storm so they had opportunity to stop driving and get to the closest shelter. Thankfully WEA improvements are coming - but until then people living in an area where deadly weather is possible need to invest a stinking $10 bill in a real app.

 

[Nick Copeland]

Actually I don't think most people listen to news radio during a tornado warning.

This is a very good point and among some of the discussions going on around here. I don't listen to the radio that often and if I do it is sports radio. Most of the time I am listening and talking on the HAM bands. One of my dual bands will alert for weather warnings so I am covered there. During one of those times I was listening a while back they were talking about market shares among radio and TV. The numbers were rather interesting but, not completely surprising considering the technology today. The study talked about that most people when in there cars do not listen to the radio as much these days as they use to due to numerous forms of alternative electronic media. MP3 players, Satellite radio, video players for kids in the back seat etc. So a lot of the radio broadcasts do not get heard. Now for this particularly storm the tor warning was in place a good 30 mins if not more before a new one was reissued to replace the current one which later produced. It seems to be the mindset of people that if they do not hear of storm being on the ground rather than " the potential" to produce a storm a lot of people ignore the warnings until confirmation of it's location. By that time it may be to late which was the case in this tornado as it sat down just about 2 miles from the highway and by the time that information is relayed it is already to late for some folks as it was on top of I-30 within a couple of minutes. It was nearly impossible to warn those people of it's location. It would be nice it TV partnered up with radio like they do up in Oklahoma and other parts and simulcast TV weather broadcasts. Then again you have to have a way to push the alert to tune to that station. It would be nice if they could build these into car radios especially with services like OnStar. As David mentioned the power flashes were definitely a life saver for us spotting on this storm.

Now I agree the WEA could use some improvements. I don't recall getting any that night but, I have in the past and when they work they work good but, then again my daughter had put my phone into power saving mode which disables location services on iPhones so they may have been why I didn't get any and if I did I didn't notice them as I had my hands full on the radio. Which brings up another issue, if the user has location services turned off then they do not get alerts, or if they turn off the WEA alerts all together. Another factor on that storm is I-30 is a major hwy that runs west to east through N. Texas and since warning polygon was running pretty much north/south. So if you're outside of the polygon and coming from parts of Dallas or west traveling east that was outside of the warning area those alerts are not going to get pushed to those users based on their location until they get into that warned area and by the time it is pushed again then could be out of it. The WEA alerts do work good but, I do agree there is room some more improvements. Like David said, had that been rush rush hour in the area it would have been much much worse as I commute that part of the hwy daily and it is very congested.

Going back to that video, I witnessed all of that in person. The one that really made me sick was seeing a car picked up and lofted into a 133' high mast tower light. Hit that pole and bent it in half like it was nothing. Later learned the vehicle was unoccupied and was picked up from the nearby apartments on the south side of the hwy before crossing the hwy.

 

[rdale]

WEA is in the process of getting improved now - the FCC is taking feedback on longer messaging among other things.

Minor correction - if they turn WEA alerts off they don't give them, but location services does not impact WEA. WEA is a tower side thing that doesn't know your individual location.

 

[Nick Copeland]

location services does not impact WEA. WEA is a tower side thing that doesn't know your individual location.

That is not exactly correct. Location services uses these services in this order to determine your location. Cellular, Wi-Fi, GPS networks, and Bluetooth to determine your approximate location.

Alerts are geographically targeted, meaning you won't receive a notification in San Francisco if you live in New York, and vice versa. While you are correct that it is a tower side event. Location services uses cell tower triangulation to determine a users location. So if you disable this feature, the network does not know your location in order to serve you the alert. This in turn also disables the Find My iPhone feature as well. So when you put your iPhone in power saving mode it disables the Location Services in order to prevent background apps from running that use your location in order to save battery life.

If you go under Location Services you can determine which resources it uses. As you notice, location based alerts is among one of the options. Hopefully this clears up some confusion.

 

[rdale]

Thanks for the hunting - but again those settings do not impact WEA messages. If the tower you are connected to broadcasts a WEA message, you will get it whether or not location based alerts is turned on. You will not receive it if you have WEA turned off.

Note the following from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033

• Location Based Alerts: Your iOS device will use your location to provide you with geographically relevant alerts, such as a reminder to call someone when you get to a specific place or when to leave for your next appointment based on where you currently are.

And http://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2013/07/wireless-emergency-alerts-iphone.html

"Although WEA alerts are based on your location, you do not need to have Location Services on the iPhone turned on to receive alerts. Your iPhone's GPS radio is irrelevant to the WEA system. As noted above, alerts are issued based upon your location as determined by cell towers. "

It's possible (likely) that the next release of WEA will use your phone's GPS to help filter down times when you can receive info from several towers, but for right now the WEA message does go a little outside of the polygon because of that lack of detail. Unless you're in an extremely rural setting, it's not more than a mile or two in most cases and that's within a typical "polygon error range"

 

[Steve Miller]

It's looking more and more like WEA will go to tower and/or GPS location on their next release. For now though, yep, still not the most accurate thing. In addition, their queue problem can still be the difference between life and death. Messages take entirely too long to make it to every device.


Sent from my iPhone using Stormtrack mobile app

 

[Steve Miller]

This might be a good time to recommend a new thread regarding this subject.


Sent from my iPhone using Stormtrack mobile app

 

[rdale]

What queue problem? I've heard isolated cases where it took 1-2 minutes, but the average is about 5-10 seconds from the studies I've examined.

ANd yes feel free to break off