Twisters

 

 

 

The Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale - became operational on February 1, 2007 and is used to assign a tornado a 'rating' based on estimated wind speeds and related damage   Ever since I was a young lad, and my parents had taken me downtown to see The Wizard of Oz, I have had a fear of tornados. For that time, the special effects used in the movie were amazing - the tornado looked so real and what it did was terrifying (it was created by making a tornado out of a 30 foot wind shape cone sock that they use at airports). Many sleepless nights followed after seeing the movie for the first time. Flash forward to 1996 when the movie Twister was released. At the start of the movie, we saw a family farm in Oklahoma get ravaged by a monster tornado. It was so strong, it sucked the door of storm shelter (along with poor old dad who was trying to hold it down) into the center of the vortex. We find out as the movie progressed the storm which finished off dad was an "F5" tornado - or as one of the movie characters called it, "the finger of God". For many of us, tornados are as fascinating as they are terrifying. They seem to come out of nowhere, do incredible damage, and then leave. A very peaceful sky can suddenly become the personification of darkness and destruction, and then hours later, become peaceful once again. They are a game changer for many families and communities. Not only can they cause death and injury, they can also erase everything standing in a matter of seconds. What happened yesterday in Moore, Oklahoma is a perfect example of the horrors a strong tornado. For a town the size of Moore, the death toll is staggering. The NWS estimate of this twister now stands now at EF 5 - a mile plus wide monster with wind speeds of 200 mph. Storms that reach this magnitude do something awful to a community - they "scour" the land. In other words, when a EF 4 or EF 5 twister makes a direct hit on a structure, there is absolutely nothing left. Nothing above ground usually survives. Moore, Oklahoma has been hit before - hard. It was hit in May 1999. The damage from that storm was terrible. The damage form yesterday's storm was worse. What I don't understand is this - Moore sits in the middle of "tornado alley" and has seen numerous storms in the past. After the 1999 storm, why were structures not rebuilt with underground survivable storm shelters?  Especially the schools. The horrors the first responders are finding in the school that "pancaked" defies description. Children should not have had to die in storms that had become much too common in the Midwest during May. After the grieving is over, the dead are buried and the injured have recovered, lets rebuild Moore with the idea this type of storm will happen again. Codes should be re-written where every shelter, be it a home, school, store or whatever, has a survivable underground "safe room". Strong killer storms have happened before, and they will happen again. People should not have to die.

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