Folks,
If you are going to criticize the private sector performance, you better criticize the NWS. Fact: There was no tornado watch in effect at the time of the EVV tornado. Fact: The NWS did not activate the tone-alert weather radios (see below).
I don't understand why so many seem to like to jump on the private sector (and don't understand how the Santorum bill got into this discussion). But, the NWS performance during this event was far from flawless. Article follows.
Mike
Some weather radios silent during storm
*By JIMMY NESBITT Courier & Press staff writer 464-7501 or
[email protected] <mailto:
[email protected]>*
*November 9, 2005*
Some families who had weather radios programmed to wake them up in an emergency never got the alarm Sunday morning.
The National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., issued a tornado warning at 1:49 a.m. for Vanderburgh County. Meteorologists called the Indiana State Police and Emergency Management Director Sherman Greer to make sure he got the warning.
But the weather radios that receive a 1050 Hertz tone stayed silent, including the receiver at the City-County Dispatch, which is tested weekly.
National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Shanklin said a software glitch was a possibility, but investigators have not determined the cause. They also believe a transmitter in Evansville may have malfunctioned, he said. "It's something complicated that we really have to dig into to find it," Shanklin said. "It is very high priority, and we're doing everything we can to figure out exactly what it is. The 1050 tone is important to us because we know a lot of people have it." Those who had digital weather radios got the warning, Shanklin said. The digital radios, which were introduced about six years ago, can be programmed to give warnings for only one county, whereas older radios give warnings for an entire region.
Even if the older radios had worked, they might not have saved lives because the storm developed so quickly, said JoAnne Smith, Central Dispatch director. The tornado spawned around 1:45 a.m. two miles north of Smith Mills in Henderson County, Ky. It plowed through Ellis Park and raced over the Ohio River at speeds of 50 to 60 mph, nearly a mile a minute. The tornado reached Eastbrook Mobile Home Park within 15 minutes. Eighteen people at the mobile home park died, and more than 200 were injured. Hundreds of homes were either damaged or destroyed. Residents there who got the warning had little time to seek shelter or escape, Smith said. The weather sirens in Vanderburgh County were activated twice, at 1:49 a.m. and 1:59 a.m. At 1:40 a.m., WEHT-News25 chief meteorologist Wayne Hart told viewers the tornado may hit southern Evansville. The National Weather Service already had issued a tornado warning for Henderson and Posey counties.
"They could have thrown Evansville into that first warning," Hart said. "They may have thought that it was going to stay south of the river."
Although people should rely on more than one resource to warn them of severe storms, weather radios are just as important as smoke alarms, he said. Hart compared the problem to "having a fire, and your smoke detector doesn't work."
Weather sirens are intended to warn people outside their homes to take shelter. Greer said all of Vanderburgh County's sirens worked Sunday morning. Tornadoes "can happen in a matter of minutes and some of them in a matter of seconds," he said. "We got about a 10- to 15-minute warning here." The wind reached a top speed of around 200 mph, making it an F3 tornado on the Fujita scale. The thundering wind and heavy rain muffled weather sirens in Warrick County, said Lt. Bob Irvin of the Sheriff's Department.
