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Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Evacuation has never been a public safety precaution for tornadoes, ever. While in theory it is a good solution reality is most people are not geographically or weather literate enough, if they get sent home from work they probably drive right into the tornado. "Drive south" sounds simply but many sounds go diagonal so 'south' might take you SW and faster into the tornado. Bad as the candle factory was only 8 of 110 died. Had they all been driving into the storm 50 of 100 die. Also in rural KY a good percent of people live in mobile homes.
Now if employees for what ever reason wanted to leave and weren't allowed that is wrong if not criminal. But mass evacuations as a protocol wouldn't have been a harm reducing response.
Evacuation has never been a public safety precaution for tornadoes, ever. While in theory it is a good solution reality is most people are not geographically or weather literate enough, if they get sent home from work they probably drive right into the tornado. "Drive south" sounds simply but many sounds go diagonal so 'south' might take you SW and faster into the tornado. Bad as the candle factory was only 8 of 110 died. Had they all been driving into the storm 50 of 100 die. Also in rural KY a good percent of people live in mobile homes.
Now if employees for what ever reason wanted to leave and weren't allowed that is wrong if not criminal. But mass evacuations as a protocol wouldn't have been a harm reducing response.
It bears repeating that this particular tornado outbreak was accurately predicted by the NWS well before the initial supercells even formed…..as in days before. They don’t just look up as the first twister touches down and go into a tizzy anymore. The forecast models were all over this event in the days leading up to it and the word was definitely out. As referenced, the harsh reality is most people just don’t pay attention in the same manner that weather professionals and even enthusiasts, for instance, do. The bottom line is the candle factory operators had more than enough time to become informed and make a decision about keeping people at work. Knowing this, none of the employees should have been faced with making the decision of whether to flee into the storm as it was happening, as they shouldn’t have been there to begin with.
I talked to a lady who has worked at the candle factory for 3 years. She said there have been several events where the company gave them the same "leave and get fired" line, the workers left, came back the next day, and the management didn't do a thing against them.
It bears repeating that this particular tornado outbreak was accurately predicted by the NWS well before the initial supercells even formed…..as in days before. They don’t just look up as the first twister touches down and go into a tizzy anymore. The forecast models were all over this event in the days leading up to it and the word was definitely out. As referenced, the harsh reality is most people just don’t pay attention in the same manner that weather professionals and even enthusiasts, for instance, do. The bottom line is the candle factory operators had more than enough time to become informed and make a decision about keeping people at work. Knowing this, none of the employees should have been faced with making the decision of whether to flee into the storm as it was happening, as they shouldn’t have been there to begin with.
Do you have any clue how often those of us in this tornado playground hear we are about to be wiped out in a day or two and it ends up either being a very gusty storm or it’s funnel clouds that never reach ground. It’s enough that other than checking the battery, candle, and water jug inventory I don’t give it much thought until I get a tornado WARNING alert. Notice that’s not WATCH but WARNING.
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Do you have any clue how often those of us in this tornado playground hear we are about to be wiped out in a day or two and it ends up either being a very gusty storm or it’s funnel clouds that never reach ground. It’s enough that other than checking the battery, candle, and water jug inventory I don’t give it much thought until I get a tornado WARNING alert. Notice that’s not WATCH but WARNING.
Most of the time I don't even pay much attention to warnings. But there was something about how this one was showing up in radar on TV, the size of it, the debris showing up thousands of feet in the air, told me this one could be bad. I got a couple chairs in our hallway for us to sit in. We could see the TV but when the power went out it was no time before it hit. I was on my cell phone with my son and my wife was talking to her daughter. Both of them said they had trouble hearing us, not by the noise, but like when you're talking while driving and go down in a low area. That was when the tornado was going by, then they could hear us fine.
At about 1:41:03, he shows the debris field I mentioned. Just listening to him is how I knew it was going to be bad.
Don't expect you to watch the entire 5 hr video, but this is what really warned me. This is the weatherman in the story I posted in post #58.
Do you have any clue how often those of us in this tornado playground hear we are about to be wiped out in a day or two and it ends up either being a very gusty storm or it’s funnel clouds that never reach ground. It’s enough that other than checking the battery, candle, and water jug inventory I don’t give it much thought until I get a tornado WARNING alert. Notice that’s not WATCH but WARNING.
We had a tornado go zipping by us this summer, about two miles away. It didn't even rain here and the leaves on the trees barely moved.
That said, Meteorologists had been tracking this exact tornado for two and a half hours before it hit Mayfield. They knew or at least strongly suspected within 20-30 minutes of touchdown it would become a long-haul tornado and had a pretty good idea of its potential path. They knew Mayfield was in its likely path an hour before it got there.
Did they know an hour in advance it would be a direct hit on the city, no. Should the plant have been closed all day out of an abundance of caution... probably not. But the management should have been paying enough attention to know when the plant was in imminent danger with plenty of lead time for staff to decide whether they'd be better off staying or sheltering at home or elsewhere.
Do you have any clue how often those of us in this tornado playground hear we are about to be wiped out in a day or two and it ends up either being a very gusty storm or it’s funnel clouds that never reach ground. It’s enough that other than checking the battery, candle, and water jug inventory I don’t give it much thought until I get a tornado WARNING alert. Notice that’s not WATCH but WARNING.
Yeah I get it, but again the crux of my assertion is this was one of those rare systems where they KNEW well ahead of time that there were going to be long tracked, destructive tornadoes and they absolutely pinpointed the region it was going to affect. I would even go so far as to contend that type of forecast constitutes greatly advanced, but nevertheless legitimate tornado warnings in of itself. They have the technology to do that now. I mean, if I'm an employer running a place like that candle factory and I see that serious of a forecast no way am I going to have over 100 people in my flimsy building in the midst of the event. You seem to be implying that forecasts of this magnitude occur routinely and that just isn't true. Long tracked, highly destructive tornado outbreaks are extremely rare, but if you are warned of such a thing occurring even a day in advance (as was the case here) your excuses for not being prepared are gonna ring mighty hollow.
Yeah I get it, but again the crux of my assertion is this was one of those rare systems where they KNEW well ahead of time that there were going to be long tracked, destructive tornadoes and they absolutely pinpointed the region it was going to affect. I would even go so far as to contend that type of forecast constitutes greatly advanced, but nevertheless legitimate tornado warnings in of itself. They have the technology to do that now. I mean, if I'm an employer running a place like that candle factory and I see that serious of a forecast no way am I going to have over 100 people in my flimsy building in the midst of the event. You seem to be implying that forecasts of this magnitude occur routinely and that just isn't true. Long tracked, highly destructive tornado outbreaks are extremely rare, but if you are warned of such a thing occurring even a day in advance (as was the case here) your excuses for not being prepared are gonna ring mighty hollow.
I’m telling you, it’s the boy who cried wolf syndrome. I get that it was far too real this time, but there are other factors at play. In our home we had no idea how serious it really was, despite being in its path. Why, because the sirens go off at least once or twice a month, because they treat heavy storms like Armageddon is coming, because to some degree you tell yourself God will is his and your lot is to deal with the aftermath, but mostly because life still must go on so you do rudimentary prep and solider on.
I know, this time the threat was real. In 1974 when our neighbor’s barn got flattened with half his dairy cows killed and dead deer littered the highway, it was all too real. In 2006 when I watched one of our school buses get lifted and tossed on three cars, it was real. But, again, I understand the thought process that probably contributed to their decision to just keep working.
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Just watched a video from the fairgrounds, the main hub for everything during the recovery. The video showed all the cases of water outside the building. The person filming said there are around 38,000 people in Graves County. They have enough water, just at the fairgrounds and not all the other places it's being dropped off, to give every person in the county 10 cases each and still have some left over.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,466,576 times
Reputation: 12187
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyryztoll
Yeah I get it, but again the crux of my assertion is this was one of those rare systems where they KNEW well ahead of time that there were going to be long tracked, destructive tornadoes and they absolutely pinpointed the region it was going to affect. I would even go so far as to contend that type of forecast constitutes greatly advanced, but nevertheless legitimate tornado warnings in of itself. They have the technology to do that now. I mean, if I'm an employer running a place like that candle factory and I see that serious of a forecast no way am I going to have over 100 people in my flimsy building in the midst of the event. You seem to be implying that forecasts of this magnitude occur routinely and that just isn't true. Long tracked, highly destructive tornado outbreaks are extremely rare, but if you are warned of such a thing occurring even a day in advance (as was the case here) your excuses for not being prepared are gonna ring mighty hollow.
A big issue is that tornado policy for a company generally is to treat all tornado warnings the same and not treat one storm differently. The NWS did issue special forecasts (meso discussions) about this storm... and almost no one outside weather industry or amateur weather enthusiasts read those. Unless the factory site manager is a weather geek they have no clue how to get or interpret such weather info. From a business's perspective they would need to evacuate for all warnings and that area has quite a few tornado warnings that don't verify.
As a weather geek it's very frustrating how tornado warnings are done. They usually read the same but the peak tornado likely to occur varies greatly. The general public perceives most tornado warnings as false alarms because 50% of the time no tornado touches down the other 45% of the time it's a minor touchdown in one small area while the entire county is warned. Only rarely is a tornado large, violent, and long track enough to merit mass public response. Problem is as a weather geek or the pros at NWS we understand when that 5% of the time is... the general public doesn't.
To illustrate the issue with evacuations... there's a YouTube video of a storm chaser barely escaping alive in the Mayfield area. He had so many safe routes available and instead just 5 minutes ahead of tornado cross it's path twice then drove down a NE running road that was barely missed by tornado. That's an experienced storm chaser. Evacuate area in a car only works for people literate both in weather and geography.
KY portion of video is from around 1:40:00 to around 2:00:00. I'm posting this mainly if you're interested in what the condition looked like just before the tornado.
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