They are showing children on the Weather Channel running to their parents..here is my question, they knew a tornado was coming, how come the school wasn’t evacuated?
This tornado blew up very quickly and right on the edge of the OKC metro area. Not nearly enough time to evacuate.
Evacuated to where?
And the worst conceivable place to be in a tornado is a school bus.
No time. Tornadoes appear and dissipate within minutes. The safest thing in that situation is to shelter in place.
Growing up in the Texas Panhandle, we had tornado drills all the time.
To where? Unless there is some massive storm shelter nearby. There is nowhere to go....it’s horrible.
“how come the school wasn’t evacuated?”
I heard they had an hour warning - that isn’t enough time for many parents to get to a school, get the kids and get to underground.
You just can’t evac a school given the warning time available - better to stay in the strongest part of the building than being caught out in the open with debris flying by at lethal speeds.
That said, given the forecast, it might have been good to dismiss and get everyone home at noon.
The thing with tornado outbreaks like this is that you don’t know if or exactly when or where they will strike or what exact place they will touch down or in exactly what direction they will go. The entire state of OK is under the gun, where would you evacuate the school to? Evacuating a school probably takes more time and is more dangerous than sheltering. I would think that most schools in that part of the country are a better place to ride out a storm than in a house or trailer home.
My question is why did they have school today anyway, knowing the likelihood of a severe weather situation. I wonder how many parents just kept their kids home today, particularly if they had a storm shelter at home.