Tornado Warnings at Motels

[Mike Krzywonski]

I'm curious to know what the standard procedures are for motels in tornado-prone areas during a tornado warning, especially at night. I heard of the Motel 6 in Hayes, KS evacuating guests to a shelter at the McDonald's next door. I've also stayed at a Holiday Inn that had a designated area & evacuation instructions posted in every room. I can't recall seeing any info. or designated areas at any of the budget/economy motels.

I'd like to hear of any experiences from those of you who have been at a motel during a tornado warning, & the action that people took. Thanks.

 

[rdale]

The only thing I noticed at my last hotel warning was the front desk clearing out the pool area... Otherwise they just answered phones from worried guests and told them to take shelter in their rooms or come down to the first floor hallways.

 

[GPhillips]

I've been in tornado warnings twice in motels.

In 1998 in Minnesota, in the middle of the night, they had someone come through and knock on all the doors and tell everyone to go to the underground parking garage. I had TWC on TV and saw from the radar loop that the threat was already to our east, so I just went back to sleep.

In 2003 in North Platte, during the late afternoon there was a tornado warning for the city of North Platte. They rang all the rooms and told people to come down to lowest floor hallway. I came down and went outside to watch a raggedy, non-rotating wall cloud go by just to our south. About a third of the motel patrons were outside watching the storm.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Back in May of this year we were at the Best Western in Great Bend and there was a monster supercell heading dangerously close to town. We called the main desk to see what there plan was and they just kinda calmy said "um, well we go into the hallway in the middle of the hotel". Since all of the rooms faced outside the hallway was just a place to get vendings. The sides were looking in from the outside were all glass. There was a staircase however to the second floor, but I still thought it was unsafe. The tornado luckily passed to the immediate east as a large stovepipe. We sat and watched the backside of the updraft and meso light up by the frequent lightning and never really felt threatened. Had that would've gone more north than northeast that couldn't have been disasterous.

 

[Terrence Cook]

On may 22nd Wakeeny, KS was hit by a small tornado around nightfall, I watched the fat funnel take shape but it wrapped itself in rain before full condensation.... anywho, the tornado hit the budget host hotel blowing a door off the hinges, breaking windows (including the car window of a chaser who was already staying there, ouch!), tore the sign down and some roofing was peeled back.

The damage was very minimal but still quite interesting, quite funny how we ended up staying there. The lady behind the desk (who was still quite freaked out) said that the hallway was the only shelter they had...

we watched the radar closely that night.

 

[Tyler_Costantini]

On may 22nd Wakeeny, KS was hit by a small tornado around nightfall, I watched the fat funnel take shape but it wrapped itself in rain before full condensation.... anywho, the tornado hit the budget host hotel blowing a door off the hinges, breaking windows (including the car window of a chaser who was already staying there, ouch!), tore the sign down and some roofing was peeled back.

The next night we stayed at the hotel, in the room with the broken door! heh.

My experience with tornado warnings, it just seems to depend on the hotel/motel most of the time NO mention of anything. Seems that most people are just clueless!

 

[Mark Blue]

My wife and I were in Chanute, KS in the Sahara Inn on the night of May 1st 2008 after we had chased out by Fredonia earlier in the evening. A few minutes after we checked-in the tornado sirens sounded and the owners did absolutely nothing. Other guests came out of their rooms and when they saw I had a laptop and other chasing equipment they asked what the deal was. When they found out I was a storm chaser they began hanging around our room as we unloaded our car and totally relied on us for advice. It ended up being a non-event, but the owners did zip, zero, zilch, nada.

On June 4, 2008 we were staying in the Quality Inn in Kearney, NE and I was up late watching Jens Pulver and Uriah Faber fight on Versus when I noticed some serious action on GRL3. Storms to the SW were being tornado warned so I knew it was only a matter of time before they would reach Kearney. At 11:30 pm the front desk called every room to notify folks to either get in their bathrooms and cover themselves with pillows or to come down to the central laundry room. Somehow the manager of the motel discovered we were storm chasers, so she relied on my nowcasting ability for advice. At midnight sharp big hail started falling and breaking out the north widows of our room (I'll never forget that sound). No tornadoes occurred, but the hail broke out a ton of windows and damaged a lot of cars in the parking lots (including ours).

I must say Quality Inn had plans in place and they worked. The Sahara Inn in Chanute was a joke as far as severe weather preparedness is concerned. Those are my stories for this year!

Mark

 

[Bart_Comstock]

Having been a night auditor myself at a Marriott I think I can help answer your question Mike. The standard procedure at Marriott is that once your county is under a watch a notice stating that a tornado or svr thunderstorm watch has been issued and it lists local tv and radio stations to listen to aswell as intructions for if a warning is issued. If a tornado warning is issued the hotel staff is suposed to evacuate the rooms into a designated shealter in the building (our's was the laundry room as it was the center most room). Our hotel had a wx radio aswell as internet access and a tv for us to moniter the weather with. That is the procedue as laided out in the employee manual and our hotel did as it said, however some hotel management and staff is lazy and doesnt follow it to the book.