Posted on 06/16/2005 3:57:38 AM PDT by kingattax
A 1999 tornado killed Samantha and Deon Darnell's infant son and Deon's mother. The Darnells are pictured here with children born since the tragedy: Abigail, 4; Gabriel, 5; and Michael, 2. (Photo by Bryan Terry)
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The tornado was born to the southwest, a monster on the plains. A mile wide, the furious funnel of red dirt erased homes from foundations, tossed tractor-trailers, peeled pavement from earth and killed 36 people.
For thousands stuck in its path, the most urgent question -- to run or to hide -- arrived in an instant. A new analysis suggests fleeing, usually not recommended, was the best choice; the findings are expected to jump-start a long-standing debate on tornado survival.
Linda Wood, home from work, found her family in the driveway. Get back in the truck, they said. With their pregnant horse in tow, the Woods sped east. Their house exploded minutes later, as if hit by a gas bomb, neighbors said.
"We outran it," says Wood, tears spilling at the memory.
Deon Darnell had fewer options. Hailstones were battering his mobile home. He rushed next door to his parents' house, squeezing into a windowless closet with six relatives. They prayed aloud.
Moments later, windows shattered and house timbers snapped. When Darnell opened his eyes, his two-story boyhood house had vanished. His mother lay nearby, dead. His wife was unconscious. Their infant boy was gone.
"It pulled the water out of the ponds, and the grass out of the ground," Darnell said. "I wasn't even sure if I was on my property."
The decision to flee or take cover from a tornado requires instant calculus: When will it arrive? How big? If I stay, where can I find safety? Should I run for the car?
Those who study tornadoes have traditionally ranked the options: Underground storm shelters are best, followed by basements, bathrooms or closets without windows. Sprinting to a car or truck has never topped the list.
But the new study of Oklahoma's legendary May 3, 1999 tornado challenges the tenet that taking flight is foolishness. In that storm, people cowering at home were more likely to die than those fleeing in vehicles, according to the analysis newly published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The paper, authored by federal and state researchers who reviewed coroner and medical reports, plus survey responses from more than 600 survivors, confirms that people caught in mobile homes face the worst odds. In the giant Oklahoma City tornado, they were 35 times more likely to die than those in permanent houses.
But the more provocative finding -- that those who tried to out-maneuver the tornado fared as well or better than those who hunkered down in homes -- is bound to stir controversy.
About 16 percent of people in the Oklahoma storm path tried to flee, researchers estimated. Two people were killed trying to reach their vehicles. Two others, killed under highway overpasses, which can act like wind tunnels in tornadoes, may have been fleeing.
Twenty-eight people died in their homes.
Relying on their sampling, the researchers calculated that people fleeing in vehicles had a 40 percent lower risk of death than those hiding in homes, including houses, apartments and mobile homes.
Better weather forecasting and advanced warnings, extensive TV coverage and increasingly sturdy cars may have helped people escape the tornado, said the paper's lead author, Dr. W. Randolph Daley, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings suggest tornado safety guidelines may need modifying, but Daley and others noted that the Oklahoma tornado was an unusual beast. Its size attracted massive attention, and its duration -- nearly 90 minutes -- provided lots of warning. Other tornadoes have resulted in numerous vehicle-related casualties.
"It raises a lot of questions about fleeing," cautioned co-author Sheryll Brown, an Oklahoma State Department of Health epidemiologist. "You have to consider traffic tie-ups and panic. It's really a difficult issue."
The Oklahoma tornado was actually one of 61 twisters that hit the state on that Monday afternoon and evening. It was the largest tornado outbreak in state history, and the biggest tornado claimed 36 of the 40 people killed.
The largest was spotted at 6:23 p.m. about 30 miles southwest of downtown Oklahoma City. It drilled northeast through rural areas, winds quickly jumping from 100 mph to nearly 300 mph -- the first category F5 tornado recorded in Oklahoma history.
Ground zero was Bridge Creek, a small rural community absent from most maps. First came hail, then unimaginable fury -- mobile homes swept from their foundations or obliterated, inch-thick asphalt sucked from a rural road, cars tossed a quarter-mile. Twelve died in Bridge Creek.
Trudging northeast, the tornado stripped paint off fire hydrants and sucked the eyeballs from a horse. Entire housing developments were leveled. In Oklahoma City, an airplane wing fell from an airport 40 miles away. In an industrial zone, a 18-ton rail left gouge marks as it bounced across an open field.
When the tornado finally died east of downtown, its legacy was complete: 1,800 homes destroyed and $1 billion in damage. Disaster workers arriving by plane were rendered speechless by the tornado's signature -- a 37-mile swath of bare earth.
More than 600 required hospital treatment. Coroner reports on the dead showed some lost their lives due to bad judgment, others because of horrible luck:
-- A 40-year-old woman with her son at her side was swept from beneath a highway overpass. Her body was found in a field.
-- A 43-year-old woman who didn't like her storm cellar took cover in a bathroom with her dog and cat. Her husband found her body under their recreational vehicle.
-- A 46-year-old woman visiting her parents in their brick home was smothered apparently after hiding beneath a bed that was crushed by debris.
-- A 45-year-old man was killed when winds lifted his car from an interstate and ejected him onto the median.
-- An 86-year-old trucker-turned-minister died when a truck crashed through his roof. He was hiding in the same closet as his wife, who survived.
"A lot of people died despite going to the right locations in their homes," said Ken James, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman. "This was such a large and destructive tornado, you really needed to be below ground."
Deon and Samantha Darnell, living in Bridge Creek, had no chance to flee. When the hail came, the tornado wall was close enough to see its churning debris. They couldn't even reach a storm cellar 100 yards away.
The family huddled in the under-stairs closet for about half a minute before his parents' home vanished in the giant vacuum. Deon was the only one in the family to remain conscious, he said. His mother, Lucille, lay nearby in a flowered shirt and purple pants; she had died instantly. Deon, his back broken in three places, remembers lying on the muddy earth and looking up at rescue workers: "Make sure you find my son," he said. When they found 3-week-old Asheton, he was dead.
Jennifer Freeman, 41, also of Bridge Creek, said she and her husband, Oscar Ray, received more than a half-dozen calls from relatives before deciding to leave. As they did, hailstones began to fall.
The couple, since divorced, rushed to retrieve their two boys from their grandmother's house. That night, Ray returned to the neighborhood alone and called Freeman from a cell phone as he approached their property. Because of roadblocks, he had to walk two miles under moonlight.
One neighbor's house lay dumped in a road. Another's was torn in half. When Ray reached their property, he gave the verdict on their home and barn: both gone. What about my Monte Carlo, Freeman asked. Gone, Ray said. The next day, Freeman inspected for herself.
"There were dead animals everywhere -- horses, cattle, goats, dogs. I later found out that there were human remains removed from our own front yard."
Sandy Henry, an Oklahoma City school administrator, and her husband, David, a utility company supervisor, took cover from the tornado just as recommended -- curled up in a tub in an interior bathroom. Before it reached their two-story brick home in Oklahoma City, Sandy Henry says she recalls thinking the approaching tornado looked odd. From her back porch, all she could see were enormous clouds of red dirt.
"At no time could you see a funnel cloud," said Henry.
Relatives called to warn them. The couple never considered fleeing "because of the unpredictability" of such a storm, Henry said. The couple retreated to the bathroom, David Henry holding their dachshund beneath one arm. They nestled into the tub under pillows to block flying glass and splinters.
David Henry reminded his wife of his love for her, and then it hit, Sandy Henry said. The sound was indescribable -- not like a jet engine, not like a freight train. "I don't know how to explain it," she said.
Then the tornado was gone, and Henry heard the hissing of broken gas lines. When she got her bearings, she realized the couple had tumbled from the tub. The house was destroyed. Their hot tub, filled with water, had vanished. Someone's truck had crashed through their roof.
Sandy remained conscious. But David Henry died, crushed by debris.
"You think you're doing the right thing," said Sandy. "But it didn't matter."
With the technology that the Okc weather stations have, it is foolish to sit in your house and take shelter. We usually have at least a half hour warning of a rotation or "hook echo". If it looks like it might get close to us, we head south.
We knew for 2 hours that the May 3rd tornado was huge and bearing down on the south side of Okc. So we stayed at home on the north side and kept an eye on the tv.
One thing about tornados and thunderstorms in OK, 99% of the time they move from southwest to northeast. The only exception being a hurricane in the gulf.
The may 3rd storm was the exception, not the rule. Most storms form too fast for an extended warning period. We've seen too many hook echos come to nothing to assume that everyone is a killer. Once that tail drops, all Hell breaks loose, and you'd better have some place you can get to on foot or you may not have much of a chance at all.
If everybody tries to run, you aren't going anywhere. The roads will be gridlocked.
Roads?! If I'm fleeing a tornado, I sure would think that roads would be optional. If there's an open field, I'm takin' it!
I think he means northern Virginia, specifically western Fairfax County where the tornado hit last year (I think it was spun off from a hurricane). A minor tornado compared to the ones in OK, but I saw some pretty big trees snapped in half.
I mean northern VA
Around 1970 I worked on the Severe Storms project in Oklahoma. Many of the folks in the country would drive out to a field, then watch for the twister, then drive to get out of the way. One night we had boomers all over, several with tornados. We were finally released from work around 4 am. As we drove back we must have seen fifty cars/trucks parked by the farm roads.
A car is one of the worst places to be if you're close to a tornado. But its useful if getting away if you can.
That's not true. It is rare for a tornado to just drop out of the sky without the local weathermen having any advanced knowledge of rotations, hook echos, wall clouds, etc... For the vast majority of storms in OK, there is a significant amount of time between the issuing of a tornado warning and the actual formation of a funnel.
We have 3 small children. We assume every OK thunderstorm has the potential to be dangerous. If it looks like the conditions are good for a tornado and it is tracking in our direction, we load up the kids and drive to a Braum's somewhere out of the path of the storm.
Prudent, yes. But people aren't killed driving from potential storms. Once an F2, the most common damage producer, is on the ground, and moving, your safest bet is to seek shelter. Driving should be a last resort. Unfortunately, our advanced weather prediction technology has produced a complacency born of too many false alarms. Most won't take action untill they are in the direwct path of the storm.
A number of people apparently got in their cars and DROVE to a highway overpass to "shelter under" and were killed or maimed...
Because of that well-known video from Kansas where people survived a (very very weak) tornado sheltering under an overpass. People also confused the weak tornado in that video with the F5 Andover tornado from the same day and mistakenly believed the people in the video had an F5 pass over them.
A lot of NWS tornado warnings now specifically warn people from stopping under overpasses. It blocks traffic and you're very likely to die.
Actually I don't understand why they got out of their cars in the video instead of just driving.
As strange as it sounds, they left their vehicles because the storm was overtaking them. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's what the news crew said.
Damn! We got a small cell blowing up over Us here in Tulsa right now!
Relying on their sampling, the researchers calculated that people fleeing in vehicles had a 40 percent lower risk of death than those hiding in homes, including houses, apartments and mobile homes.
and
The paper, authored by federal and state researchers who reviewed coroner and medical reports, plus survey responses from more than 600 survivors, confirms that people caught in mobile homes face the worst odds. In the giant Oklahoma City tornado, they were 35 times more likely to die than those in permanent houses.
So people who fled had 40% lower risk than those who stayed in their homes. But those in their homes included those in mobile homes, which were 35 times more likely do die that those in permanent houses.
So if the question is who should flee and who should hide, isn't the most pertinent question whether or not they are in a mobile home? If the mobile home group (35 times more likely to die) were removed from the group of people who stayed in their homes, certainly the remaining group of people hiding in permanent homes would have fared much better than those who tried to flee.
Clearly, mobile homes are death-traps in tornados. The risk to that group towers above all others. Any group that includes that group is going to come out looking hazardous by comparison. For example, if we lump the mobile home dwellers with the people who fled, on the reasoning that they were all in enclosed spaces atop wheels, then fleeing would look like the much more dangerous approach.
The real lesson here is that mobile homes are dangerous in tornadoes. But I don't think there is anybody who lives on the plains who is not aware of that fact.
Do houses in OK not have basements?
The problem with running from them here is the topography. We have lots of steep terrain, much of the area is heavily wooded, and the roads aren't laid out in that nice section grid pattern you have out west - many originated as cow tracks and follow the fall of the land.
So you can't run from them here, because (1) you can't see them because of the hills and trees (2) a road doesn't necessarily go where you want to go, or may start out going that way and then turn you right back into the storm's path.
We were caught in a traffic jam on I-75 south of Atlanta late one night when a tornado came across the highway. We and about 50 other people got up under a freeway overpass because there was literally nowhere else to go - highway jammed in both directions, unclear info on the radio, and a loud roaring sound in the dark! We were huddled right up in the angle of the bridge between the girders. Fortunately it passed about a mile to our south. Looked like a vacuum cleaner had gone across - pine trees snapped off about 3' off the ground in a 100 yard wide swath.
The good side of the topography here is that it makes the tornados "skip" - if you're on the lee side of a hill you'll just hear it roaring overhead and get a few trees snapped off. That happened to us. Our house is in a hole, and the tornado that passed directly over us (while we were huddled in the downstairs coat closet) touched down about 10 miles up the road and obliterated a strip mall and car dealership.
We don't have an in-home shelter because our house is built on a crawlspace (I spoke to a met. prof at U of OK about this). We can't dig a "fraidy hole" because the house sits on shelving rock 6-18" under the topsoil. So we just sit in the closet and pray when the warning goes off.
Our NEXT house is going to have a proper reinforced shelter in the SW corner of the basement, with water & food, pulldown bunks, and an antenna for the weather radio.
But I really think with the F-5s all bets are off.
"As strange as it sounds, they left their vehicles because the storm was overtaking them."
Stay in the car, get turned into a missile. Ever wonder what those larger pieces of "stuff" are, swirling around the funnel in tornado videos? Cars, mostly. Get out of the car and find a solid shelter. A bridge overpass, a culvert under the road, or even a low spot with something to hold onto. But get out of the car. These tornado chasers have given everybody the entirely wrong impression.
"Do houses in OK not have basements?"
Some areas are sitting almost on bedrock, making a basement prohibitively expensive. Look up Jarrell, Texas for a reference.
An exterior cellar is safer than a basement as the house may collapse into the basement.
Heck of a storm we got last night (just south of Tulsa). I was up and pacing around, the wind was so bad! I just love my neighbor's massive, gigantic VERY TALL cottonwood tree, but Is sure wouldn't love it in my living room!
This morning, it's raining again and there are limbs and debris all over. My other neighbor's tree is split in two.
I thought about you last night, Becky! Wondered how you were faring.
We watched those '99 tornadoes coming all afternoon in Broken Arrow...very frightening. I don't know where we woulda run to, that evening. I know now, though...some people down the street have a shelter and I'd run straight to that!
Thanks...did not know that.
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