Evacuate a City?

[NealRasmussen]

Pardon me if this has been discussed to death, or is in the
wrong area.

On May 31st, 2013 the entire city of Moore tried to evacuate. Entire
mile stretches of roads in south Moore were clogged with bumper
to bumper 1mph lines of cars.

I don't want this thread to be WHY this occurred. That it is likely to
occur again is the issue.

The City of Moore should remove the 4-way stop signs at the major
mile crossroads with addressable signals. Ones with LED panels
that could say, Tornado West! Do not go west! And have appropriate
blinking lights. It would help with EM vehicles too.

People will stupidly try to flee again someday, perhaps with
tragic results. Education to not evacuate from a tornado in a
city, and routing/control of traffic could save a few.

Neal

 

[rdale]

That would mean someone has to _know_ where the tornado is, and be in a position to send updates to those signs, and assume that people will read and act on all of that. The first is fiscally impossible, the second is doubtful too...

 

[NealRasmussen]

That would mean someone has to _know_ where the tornado is, and be in a position to send updates to those signs, and assume that people will read and act on all of that. The first is fiscally impossible, the second is doubtful too...

Doppler tells you where. And chasers. And the news choppers. An IP socket makes it addressable from a redundant number of sites. Blowfish or the latest makes it fairly secure. Quite easily doable, actually. Could have done it in DOS 3.3 on a 486 class machine. Could be fairly automated, given TVS track, and so what sections of what roads.

As to people obeying a flashing LED sign saying "Do NOT go west. Tornado. Turn south." With big arrows for the many whom can't read? I think a few well. I don't think we should gear society to that of the Snookie mentality.

Same way 15 yrs ago I posted how cell phones should/could have an all-hazards warning, and gee wow. They do now.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Personally, I think it would be too much of a liability for city signs to tell people to go somewhere specific when a tornado is nearby. Say the tornado is west, and a sign says go south. People go south and the storm turns hard right and kills people. That wouldn't be good. I might could see a sign saying....tornado warning for *........* county. Use caution.

 

[NealRasmussen]

Ya. Lawyers.

All I know is may 31st 2013 was a potential large scale death toll on even an F3. Old F scale, non-hyped.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

You fix May 31st by having more than 4 crossings of the canadian river (I-35, I-44, OK-4, US-81) in a 100+ mile stretch. The traffic had nowhere to go.

 

[Jason_Dasho]

Gee I thought building a debris wall was going to fix all the problems for Moore...All joking aside, having lots of experience dealing with evacuations from wildfires and other issues such as hazmat in rural and small communities I can tell you that it is an extremely difficult and resource intensive to facilitate a safe and orderly evacuation. Now compound the issue with being an urban area, and the fact that when looking at a lead time of 20 -30 minutes if lucky,it is not a possible to facilitate an evacuation in this area without putting people in greater harm. That is why hurricane evacuations occur in tiers often a few days before land fall. The debate has been going on for quite along time way before the Mike Morgan incident. I remember it being a hot topic back at the NWA conference when it was in Biloxi MS in 2000 ish. I believe shelter in a safe place and community storm shelters is the only viable option for major urban centers.

 

[rdale]

Doppler tells you where.

No, it tells you kind of where it might be.

And chasers.

They don't tell you a thing unless you're watching their stream or they submit a SN report.

And the news choppers.

What you seem to be missing is that none of those reports are automated. If the news chopper has the tornado in view, how does that information get to your DOS 3.3 box with no humans in the loop?

As to people obeying a flashing LED sign saying "Do NOT go west. Tornado. Turn south." With big arrows for the many whom can't read?

And how many are encouraged to GO west just for that reason?

Same way 15 yrs ago I posted how cell phones should/could have an all-hazards warning, and gee wow. They do now.

Well they had it 15 years ago, it's just a different delivery mechanism these days. The current WEA system is pretty good by 15 years ago standards What we need is an automated way showing where the tornado warning is, and how you can get out of its path based on road conditions, traffic, visibility due to rain in between, where your nearest shelter is, etc. Saying that in 2015 a message with "Tornado Warning for your area, tune to local media" is an accomplishment seems to be undervaluing the tech...

 

[Shane Adams]

The only thing needed that can actually be utilized is for the public to pay attention to the weather. It still blows my mind that 24 people died in Moore on May 20 when KWTV had a live shot of the RFB about an hour before the tornado was tearing through Moore. I mean, when you have kids in schools and there's a live shot of a storm, how do you not know that as an administrator of a school located in probably the hottest tornado frequency area on the planet? How do you not know that morning this is a real possibility? How are parents not allowed to drive five minutes down the road and pick their kid up from school? I just don't get that at all.

Tornado warnings are better than they have to be. The problem is people. Not education. Awareness. People are too busy caught up in everyday life, and nothing bad is ever gonna happen to them...it will be someone else. Different post/year, same broken record. Another problem is, we keep building into target areas. More stuff gets built, more targets to hit. It really is that simple.

Liability is going to exist regardless. Mike Morgan will be forever crucified because he took action ("but it was the wrong thing to say"). If he'd done nothing and 200 people got wiped off the face of the earth because they hunkered down in their cracker box houses (many of which were in the projected path that day), he'd be crucified anyway, just by a different group of people. Point is, do whatever plan or action you can dream up. It's impossible to move that many people, even if they were paying attention. When they're not, forget it.

Days like 5-3-99 and El Reno and Greensburg are gonna happen. It's unavoidable. We know this because everyone is still throwing Morgan under the bus, and running over him and backing up and running over him again. He tried something different in the face of certain disaster. He was proactive. But proactive is only appreciated when it works. When it doesn't....

So, now that we know May 31 El Reno "go south" was wrong, what does that leave us with? It leaves us with 5-3-99, Greensburg, Joplin. Pick your poison.

 

[rdale]

While the premise of your note is good -- telling people to take the wrong action is far worse than not telling them anything. It amazes me that only two TV meteorologists in the heart of tornado alley are the ones to tell people that bad of information about tornado safety. You'd think out of ANYONE, they would be the ones that know tornado safety better than others...

 

[Jeff Duda]

I think at some point you just have to acknowledge there's nothing that can really be done (save for ideal conditions including effectively infinite resources and a smart/educated population that is experienced in the area).

I'm pretty sure that even if Moore (or any other city of its size) were located in the middle of the plains with a perfect one-mile road grid and no rivers, mountains, or other geographical features to block people from escaping quickly, it would still prove too difficult to evacuate a city in front of a tornado. There's just not enough time (especially if you have to wait until it has formed and become violent looking (or has a history of doing catastrophic damage) and not enough organization amongst the residents. You'd also have to make sure everyone has a place to go - just leaving the city isn't good enough (where do you stop? people can't just stop on the roads...it will clog the roads behind them thus leaving those on the same road behind them screwed). This would probably involve making agreements with neighboring towns and cities about allowing a mass influx of residents for short time periods. Good luck getting agreement on that.

 

[rdale]

In a few decades I could see it being more successful (without bringing up the "will meteorologists become extinct" thread ) If you can tell a town that an EF5 will be there in 90 minutes, I'd be making precautions that involve driving far away...

 

[Jason Boggs]

Then the EF5 dissipates before reaching town, and everyone is pissed that they got their sweet time wasted for nothing. The next time it happens, people will ignore it thinking it will have the same effect as the last one. Then....were back to square one.

 

[Warren Faidley]

There are multiple issues with this idea.

First of all, who makes such a decision? And who updates the information as things change? Someone might say, for example, "Everyone head west out of OKC on I-40!" Then, a second supercell forms and produces an EF5 that plows through the thousands of cars stuck on the Interstate.

The best advise is to educate people in large cities that special precautions need to be taken on those limited days when violent tornadoes are possible. This is a personal choice, like smoking. You can either limit your risk by heading to a shelter well in advance of a traffic jam or take the chance that nothing will happen. The problem is many adults make poor decisions not only for themselves, but for children.

For travel, I would suggest large signs like we have in Arizona for dust storms strategically placed along the major Interstates like I-40 and I-35 that advises drivers many miles away (in stable wx regions) to exit now and avoid driving towards "X" because of tornadoes, hail, etc.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I don't think there is a good answer for protecting everyone. The best answer is for everyone to be individually responsible to be aware, having a plan and executing the plan when the time comes. Of course, there will always be a portion of the population who won't be and those are the one's who will depend on being told what to do, and these are the people who are most at risk when the time comes. Over time, you hope this portion shrinks as low as possible but it will never be zero. You would hope that lessons were learned on May 31st and started many people down the road of personal responsibility for their own safety, but that won't be known until the next time a city is under the gun.