OK Voices; Tornado Preparedness

Good evening and welcome to this panel discussion on storm safety preparedness presented as part of KGOU's ahead of the storm the Oklahoma tornado project. Funding for this project comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I'm KGOU News Director Kurt Gwartney and with me are Michael Ann Uden, Deputy Director with the State Office of Emergency Management, Rick Smith, Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the Norman Forecast Office of the National Weather Service, and Harold Brooks, Senior Scientist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory. Welcome to each of you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Our topic this evening is all about being ready, knowing where to go, what to do, and how to prepare for our upcoming spring storm season. And to provide some structure to our discussion, I'm going to first ask our experts about how Oklahoma and its residents here should prepare based on where we are, and then also how that might be a little different depending on where we are, and we'll just start off Michael Ann with you. So, I'm at work. I work in an office building, let's say in downtown Oklahoma City. What do I need to do? How do I need to think about that environment being prepared for a possible

severe storm or tornado in my area? Well, I think you hit it on the nose. You may not be home whenever severe weather occurs. So you need to have a plan for where you're going to be safe, how you're going to shelter in place, or any other actions you need to take, depending on whether you're at work, at church, at a community gathering, whatever the case may be, you need to be mindful of that, and you'd have a plan. Most important things have a plan before the storm hits. We find it's a little difficult. There's anxiety and other things that set in. If you don't plan ahead of time, it's much more difficult to plan when the tornado or other severe weather's on the way. And how would that office environment work? Would there be specific recommendations you might make for someone who works in a downtown office high-rise building? Well, certainly, in a high-rise building, the first thing that comes to my mind is glass, and you'd want to be away from that, and you'd want to be at the lowest level you could get to. And the centermost place in that structure. And those are words most local homins are from here. Well, we've grown up hearing it, exactly. Rick, what about a place like school or church? Those are very large,

kind of open buildings with a lot of people. Any recommendations for how we might think, and those of us who have kids in school, how as parents we might think about getting ready, if we have children in those locations? Well, all of three of us are probably going to sound like a broken record because we're all going to say, get as low as you can, put as many walls between you and the tornado as possible. That's, that will take care of you everywhere. I mean, that's the basic overarching tornado safety guidelines, no matter where you are. I follow up real quickly on something on Michael Ann's question. One of the things if I worked in a high-rise building in downtown Oklahoma City, a key part of being ready for storms is paying attention to the weather. And if it's five o'clock and it's time for you to lead that high-rise building in downtown Oklahoma City, don't get in your car and drive if there's storms between you and your house. So that's a basic thing we may talk about cars later. Schools, churches, we think any place where people gather need to obviously have an organized severe weather safety plan that includes multiple ways to get a warning that includes places to

seek shelter. And in Oklahoma, it's, it's not enough to just plan to shelter the people that are actually there. Sometimes you have to shelter hundreds of people that show up to take shelter in, in, in one of those places. So certainly, you know, schools, churches, any public gathering facilities should have a plan of action. Identify the locations that offer the best protection that they have available from the tornado with the theory again being getting as far inside the building as you can, putting as many walls or barriers between you and the outside as you can and being as low as possible. Harold, so I'm shopping at the big box store looking for an electrical outlet that I need to put in and the tornado comes. There aren't any walls. The center is nothing under a huge span and I know that the situation kind of occurred in Joplin. So what do I do if I'm caught out shopping in this situation? Well, I think one of the most important things is that you need to be aware of the threat of the possibility of

severe weather before you go shopping. Going to a big box store is probably not the best idea during a tornado watch, especially if storms are relatively close because they are, they're just not built to handle a tornado at all. And we did see that big problem in Joplin. And so being aware and knowing whether you should postpone that, that trip, do you really need the electrical outlet before the tornado or not? And can you decide and then making an intelligent decision to not be in a bad place? And a lot of that, a lot of that is really the heart of any plan is is making sure that you're in as good of a place as you can be when the event occurs. And I'm sure we're going to be hearing the word plan a lot. And that's my next question and Rick, we're going to start with you. There have been several situations where the National Weather Service will issue statements. You know several days out before an event that they predict we might see tornadoes with a significant risk for tornadoes. So let's say three to five days out, this information is coming from your office. How should I take

an information in and then how should I be looking at my plan? Once I know that this risk is increased in the days ahead. That's that's a great question. And in most, well, all of the large tornadoes that we've had over the past several years, that exact scenario has happened. We've been talking about those events for days. We started talking about the May 20th tornado potential for severe weather on that day on May 15th. That far out is just an outlook. And we obviously cannot pinpoint where exactly the tornadoes or severe weather are going to happen or even if it's guaranteed to happen. But the Norman Forecast Office and National Weather Service is pretty conservative. And if you hear us talking about it five days out, you should probably pay very, very close attention to it. What I would be doing that far out is first of all realizing that it's not exact, realizing that it's just providing you a heads up. So if I'm telling you three to five days from now, there's a potential for tornadoes. Think about what you're going to be doing three to five days from now. Do you have a

trip to go to your daughter's soccer tournament in Tulsa? Well, you need to start thinking about that. Is that are you going to be at church at six o'clock on a Sunday evening? Are you going to be driving home from work? Just that's the time in that looking out into the long range future to start thinking about that. Do you have a weather radio? Do you have three ways to get a warning? What is your kit look like? Do you need to vacuum out the spider webs out of your storm shelter? That kind of thing. I mean, that's those are the kinds of things that those outlooks are good for. You can't, you know, that's not the time to pack up the car and, you know, go and vacate. Well, maybe it is. But if you're going to do it, that's probably the time to do it. But, you know, that's the time to just start thinking in your head. Okay, it's April or May or June and Oklahoma. Here we go. Am I ready for it? If it happens, what am I going to do? Michael Ann in your job is deputy director of the Office of Emergency Management. My guess is when you hear that information from the Norman Forecast office or from the Tulsa office because you do cover the entire

state that you have things to get ready for, tell me just a little bit, give me a little bit of insight into how the Office of Emergency Management prepares for one of these possibly significant tornado events. Well, absolutely. One of the first things actually is we're so blessed by the great forecasting capability and the technology that's available through our partners. Here they're so locally stationed and that helps us out a great deal and we're exceptionally right whenever Rick and the other partners there, National Weather Service and the severe storms lab, come forward and say this is going to be a serious situation. We do heed that. One of the first things that our employees have to do though is make sure that their home, their family situation is good and we preach that they need to have a plan for their loved ones at home as well. I am less efficient and productivity is not as good on my part if I'm worrying about my family. So this is one of the first things and that could apply to a lot of the first responders as well as others

out there that would assist during any kind of disaster. But from the emergency operations center at the state capital in Oklahoma City, we work there getting ready for what may be coming our way and the first people we reach out to in addition to National Weather Service is our local emergency managers. They're the boots on the ground. There are our number one customer if you will because they are the ones who are going to have the eyes and ears right there to be able to tell us what's going on and be able to get a hold of us if they need any assistance. So we reach out to them and make sure basic things like contact information is up to date. Do they know anything is there a special needs population in their community that they're concerned about those kind of things and we just have those conversations. We have a number of conference calls and all of that occurs but again I want to stress it's not just what's happening at your business but what's happening at your home. Harold, how is your family prepared for storms? Well you know there's it's one of

those things that being someone who in theory knows more than the average person about about what's going on. We have a whole series of different kinds of plans. If I'm at home things are different than if I'm not at home because that's just yeah my wife and my wife and my kids know there are certain things too. For instance my kids know that you know if it's if it's a potential severe weather day we aren't doing things like you know watching a DVD on TV to where we can't get local information at all that they are they are aware of of being ready to get information and being prepared for the fact that they may need to do something. My daughter has spent the last three and a half years in still water and so just trying to make sure that she's aware and that when she was in the sorority house that you know making sure that there was a plan for the house so that she could be sort of a leader in that role and so we have a we have an in-residence shelter as a walking closet of our bedroom and so the kids know what to do if they needed to get into that and get the dogs in

there. My wife is a school teacher and so obviously she's got responsibilities at school that she has to make sure that she's ready for but we probably my wife and children are quicker to go to shelter than I am but that's in some sense that's because I can go I can go look at the radar and I can go you know it's going to miss us by a couple of miles we're actually okay here and or I'll wait to go with it the last minute till it's like it's it's it's really a serious situation whereas they know essentially if the warning comes out for Cleveland County or if the sirens go off they're going in and they aren't even going to try to make an interpretation on their own. The idea of of warnings and and Rick you actually mentioned we need to have multiple ways to receive warnings came up and of course one of those is the NOAA Weather Radio which I know and our family you know that sits on the bedside and we wait for that Wednesday noon and Wednesday evening test to make sure it's working especially as spring arrives but not everybody has one of those and people depend on a lot of

different ways to get their information so Rick how do you just start off by telling us just a little bit about kind of give me the the list of what you would put as priorities in terms of receiving that information what are kind of your primary sources maybe secondary sources and then we'll go from there well yeah we we really encourage people to have multiple ways and when we work with our emergency management partner certainly they have multiple ways to get warning every single person that was in Oklahoma needs to have more than one way and preferably three ways and having three apps on your phone doesn't count as three ways by the way so that would be one way I mean you're basically saying the phone is one way phone is one way but as anybody that's lived through a significant severe weather event here in the Oklahoma City Metro area one of the first things to go when we have a tornado in the areas the cell phone service so you may very well get that warning on your app but it could be 45 minutes later it just depends that that's dependent on the cell phone service television is the number one way people had to get

weather information here when we do surveys and talk to people you get it all there you get the pictures you get the words you get descriptions video helicopter you get you know there's nowhere else like it in the world then the weather information we get here on television we're fortunate to have those partners who help us get the word out about what's going on but that's not going to work if your power is out or you lose your cable or your direct TV or dish network or it's 2.30 in the morning when it happens so you can't rely on just that so I wonder what weather radio is at the top of my list for everybody for $30 you can get a radio that has a battery in it that you can program for your county and that will sound an alarm and it will wake you up we have one on our bedroom too and it will wake you up and let you know go turn on KGOU go turn on your favorite TV station and see what's going on so weather radio is at the top of the list one of the things that is on most people's list but that I in my opinion should not be as high as it is outdoor warning sirens outdoor warning sirens are a valuable tool and lots of people heard

those during the May tornadoes and it's saved lives probably because people took it seriously the problem is that people rely on those too much and people wait to hear that siren and in the absence of the siren they think the tornado is not going to happen some people it's like the siren is the signal that opens the gates to the city that lets the tornado come in and it can't happen until the siren sound and we just don't want people to rely solely on that or or wait for that some people will literally we've talked to people that literally sit on the couch and wait yeah I knew there was a warning yeah I knew it was dark outside my power went out I saw debris falling but I never heard the siren so I didn't take shelter and that's that's scary I mean so that can't be your only way so really just have multiple ways an app is a good thing to have but don't depend on it whether radio TV sirens subscription services communities offer push notifications will those send you messages there's there's really no excuse any more to say it struck without warning and of some emergency management actually has a way to receive warnings to the

phone is that all right my client well absolutely we have a we have a system that you can set up go to our website and you can subscribe to get those warnings as well and basically we're getting the national weather service information directly to you I'm like Rick the partners in the media are extremely important and I know there are multiple apps out there that you can sign up for as well and I don't think you can sign up for too many is what it comes down to but again like he said anything on your cell phone that's one we preach that and we really believe that the multiple ways of getting that information is extremely important and we've seen it save lives Harold in terms of some of the newer ways people get information for example social media Twitter that kind of thing I noticed in particular during the Canadian county El Reno event last year that there were Twitter messages being shared that seemed like it was like current information but in fact when you would go back and look you would discover it was actually quite old as there may be any

investigation or looking into how social media informs the way we approach storms well last week but was it even earlier this week last week the weather service office actually didn't experiment in which they put out a message on Twitter and asked people to retweet it just to see how things moved and when people noticed and I'll admit I was someone who didn't notice in the first few minutes because I was a dinner and wasn't thinking about the fact that I know we're about to have this experiment that I should be participating in but that you know there were a lot of people who didn't get the message for 15 to 20 minutes after it happened and then they put it out and if you look at it you know unless you see it at 5.37 p.m. this was occurring you actually don't know what event that that that tweet is referring to in the same thing the same thing with Facebook that's a real challenge we're doing and we're going to do some work this summer with a summer student who's actually going to try to look at essentially the propagation of both good A and bad messages and how long messages go out for instance I have a lot of friends or

works children have gone to the school my wife teaches at and so all the teachers at Whittier follow Rick on on Twitter and when when he puts something out that message gets out in to them in a very in a very rapid way well we'd like to know compared to say Rick putting something out or my next door neighbor who knows as far as I know nothing at all about whether putting out a tweet about whether you know to some people those two messages look the same and so how do how can we look at how how good messages go and things that have specific time and and space location and and the latency of effect of what's going on because I know that on May 20th you could still see messages at five o'clock about the tornado that was entering more if you were using that you be very badly informed and I know that even applies Rick in terms of pictures I've I've noticed too that that pictures will get sent out of of something and then often someone from your office will will go that was from like three years ago that's that's not a real event so how do we in this in this

day and age whenever I think most of the time if somebody I know tells me something I'm going to take it a little more seriously and personally and directly then if I get it from the office of emergency management or even the National Weather Service in Norman how should a person approach information when there's so much happening and they want to know and they're hungry for that how do you filter that how how do you be prepared to really focus on the information you need to know that's a great question and there is if you would ask me ten years ago is it possible to have too much weather information out of said no way I think it is now because there are so many sources of weather information some of them official some of them reliable honestly there are some very slick looking Facebook pages out there that have very shiny official looking graphics that are run by a 12-year-old kid on his mom and dad's laptop who has no background in meteorology and has no clue what he's even talking about and people they may have tens of thousands of followers following

that it's very hard for people to distinguish when someone posts a weather graphic or a picture or radar image that looks very official well it looks good to me so you know they share it and then that propagates what I'm telling people this year is just find reliable known trusted sources of information a local television meteorologist a local radio station the local national weather service office local emergency manager the more emergency management offices on Twitter follow them just don't randomly and blindly share things and retweet things and and like things that where you don't know the source because it can look really legit it can look really official and really like it's current information and and not be and going back to Harold's the question he asked Harold a minute ago one of the things we're doing to combat some of that is in a in time-sensitive information we're trying to put a time stamp on it so if it's the more tornado I think most of the tweets we did during the

tornado said 301 p.m. tornado emergency so that reduces the likelihood of it getting I mean I've seen tornado tweets two days after the event still being retweeted in pictures and it's very confusing Michael in any any work in in your area on on developing and using strengthening maybe the use of social media even though it we obviously are running into some difficulties and getting timely accurate information in that way I think Rick hit on it it's about we're back to planning and researching and knowing which one of those sides or which page you're gonna follow and all these different organizations that are out there and again you have to do that research ahead of time and know which groups which entities you're gonna rely on to keep you and your family and your business and other places safe Harold I want to go back to the arena event and ask you this question one of our neighbors where we live who was sheltering with us had her iPad and was you know looking at a tornado picture an image from a website and as far as I know she has absolutely no experience

or knowledge and how to use that what are some of the and I know there are a lot of people who have these apps and they would they will look at the radar signatures and to kind of decide when they need to take shelter and when to be safer not what are some of the risks and the problems with with doing that well I'll say this even even for someone who's you know as a PhD in atmospheric sciences there are times when radar interpretation is not easy especially if I haven't been sitting there watching the radar evolution for the whole afternoon if I've been if if it doesn't happen very often with the fact that I have a real job that even if I just occasionally glance over I don't get the full picture of what's going on and if I just get a single snapshot look at the radar I can be very confused as to what as to what's going on and that's I think one of the things that that I value from the from the forecast office is the fact that I know what I've been in forecast offices in during during outbreaks and I know what they're doing and so I know the level of attention they're putting to

the to the events and so their interpretation tends to be really solid and they tend to be Rick Rick said something I think very important earlier that the the the Norman forecast office is a relatively conservative office in terms of in terms of warnings and in terms of procedures that doesn't mean they're going to let events go by but they aren't going they don't hype minor events and I think that's a really important thing that if if they say something's happening you've with severe with severe thunderstorms they've you've got a real good chance that that's what's actually going on because they're their experience they've got they've got good procedures and the the office interacts very well with each other this is if it isn't the best office for tornado and zero thunderstorm rings out and I know what is and I think that's an important thing is that they it takes a lot to learn how to read radar and especially as new products become available and the and the radars change and you can see different radar displays of the same storm and just different even from the same radar and they've been processed differently and they look different and the map background may be different and you you

really need to know sometimes exactly where where something is to a to a pretty fine degree and I think that's one of the things that that I mean I'll look at radar and I'm you know I can pick out the hook echo and all that but they're more complicated situations sometimes in which I pay attention to what these guys do so I know when they say something I know what that means and sometimes that radar information depending on the app when you're getting it actually can be also be old isn't it right isn't it right is it horribly old sometimes and you don't and and you may not know you better make sure that the app has a timestamp on the on the radar image so you can realize oh I haven't gotten a new image for 25 minutes up at that storm's a whole lot closer to me than it looks like on that on the radar data is always old there's no way to see live radar data if you're watching a TV station where they have their local their own radar where it's turning and you're seeing it that's as bad a live as you're going to get you're not going to get live radar on an app or on a computer doesn't matter what app you use or how much you pay

for it it's it's old and it's it's sometimes several minutes old and like Harold said there's been instances where people didn't see a time stamp or didn't know that the radar that it had stopped their app had stopped updating and looking at something that's you know 15 or 20 minutes old and that can be a big problem Harold can refer to this and Rick I was sick with you and asked this question and I know growing up being a native Oklahoma and tornado warnings used to involve counties and then it kind of became county and now we're down to closer to an area but still I think it it's that familiarity that we have growing up in the state and you know I've been affected by tornadoes it's been fairly indirectly just personally how do you express the information the urgency of a situation that's life threatening to people who might shrug their shoulders because yeah I've heard them say that before well that's a challenge and like we've talked about a couple of times you know we we try to do we don't talk like we talked on May 19th and May 20th and May 31st all the

time we only do it when we really are confident that it's going to happen so it really means something we don't say the sky is falling every single time there's a risk of thunderstorms or that there's even a risk of tornadoes there are tornadoes and there are tornadoes and we try to reserve that's strongest language and what we do is there are things that we do for the public and there are things that we do for our partners on Michael Ann mentioned earlier the conference calls and the webinars that we do we have such a a strong relationship with our partners in public safety fire police emergency management especially that it's almost like they can hear by the tone of our voice or the words that we say or how we words something on a Facebook post or a tweet if we if we really mean it this time or not so that's hard to bottle and get everybody to do for the public I mean we we we try to just reserve that wording we try to be as specific as we can with the timing the past several

events we've been able to nail down pretty well several hours in advance even before the watch comes out you know this two countywide area this three hour time span has the highest risk so the more specific we are the more conservative we are with using the the really scary language hopefully that gives people confidence now we know people are not going to go just based on what we say that we know people are gonna flip through the TV stations and go on the internet and see if their friends are excited about it on Facebook and Twitter and we know that happens but our our role I think here is to be really the science-based just the facts and and just telling people what we think is going to happen if we're worried about it we want people to understand how worried we are about it and one thing that could help with that that we that we talked earlier about preparation is it's it's really important to know what county you live in and what counties you're close to like my kids by the time they were seven they didn't know any of the counties to the east I mean Lincoln

and Potawatomi County or whatever way but yeah Cattle Grady County we're good on we're good on those counties and know what they look like on the map we're actually really fortunate around here you know there's that big square thing in the middle there the two triangular things just below it I was in Columbus Ohio summer years ago in a tornado morning and I realized all the counties are just these kind of weird shaped things I had no clue on their little map up in the corner where I was and so I'm going hey somebody's getting hit really hard pretty soon and I hope it's not me because I don't know where I am on this map and then the satellite went out so I couldn't see the TV anymore so everything was okay I couldn't see it but that but that's one of the things and there are things like they're we we've done some survey work with people what they understand about their place-based understanding of of where they are and found things like the phrase I-35 corridor there were people who go am I in the I-35 corridor well that's an interesting question what's a corridor what's a

corridor how wide is it is the corridor you know just the four lanes on the road or six lanes or is it you know miles and either side and that was one of things I think we but certainly from the professional side we're trying to figure out well how do we say things as unambiguously as possible given that people we think we're saying a very I don't where the I-35 corridor is heck yeah but that I don't know if I if if we can actually communicate that and the people will understand it in the same way but know what county you're in and the counties near you know your county sounds like a good geography quiz for our elementary students Michael Ann so the storm has come it hit my neighborhood I emerged from my closet and while I'm I seem to be okay I look around and it's destruction what what are what are some of the first things I should do kind of give us a checklist as an as an emergency management leader as to what you would hope that people would do when they first emerge in that in that horrible

side well I think the first thing that you would do naturally is check on yourself are you okay take inventory of your physical situation and any loved ones you had with you whenever you went into that sturdy closet hopefully the second thing is something you would have done before you went into that closet and that is in my case if a tornado is coming toward my home before I get into my storm shelter I'm gonna let someone know I'm getting in there so that after the storm comes through if I'm not calling them back or texting them back or something somebody's to come looking for me because they know where I'm at I think that's one of the most important things to do and it gives people some sense of relief when they do go into those safe spots if you will and then the next thing is I think it's just a natural thing especially here in Oklahoma you will see people trying to check on their neighbors and all that but just be very careful that because there may be electric lines down there may be a whole host of hazards out there to greet you the very good news is that very soon you

should see some first responders and possibly the media even before the first responders sometimes we understand that but they're part of our partners as well and as far as the first responders just do what they say please if they say this area is not safe and we need you to move out please do that because they're doing it for your own safety and then gradually more and more information will come through you'll start getting more of your bearings but it is a lengthy process and we understand that and when you go into shelter you've got do simple things like make sure you get shoes exactly the number of injuries that happen after the tornado because people come out and they they survive the tornado uninjured and then they step on a nail or something like that make sure you're you're you're very good point and that's at those little things like that that people don't necessarily think about especially if it's slightly evening and you're getting ready for bed and you know you don't think about putting on shoes or taking in the helmet to protect your head your

checkbook so that if you have to do something with money you've got something Michael and after those situations I know that those first responders are obviously looking for victims people who need that immediate assistance and help is there something I can do ahead of time to help that process along is there any way to let those people know kind of where I might be and what's going on well absolutely and after this storm has come through and you survived it there's going to be system set up they're going to be announced there's going to be websites you can go to to let your friends and family know where you're at I believe the Red Cross has one that we always turn to and then there may be local phone numbers set up and and all that again so that you can let your loved ones know where you're at because as are already been mentioned here tonight is that phone system goes down quite often and sometimes it's not because of the damage from the storm it's sometimes just because of the overload of use so again we're back to in your planning have those systems

in place that you've already identified how you're going to get a hold of people maybe you tell you your loved ones and your friends our safe place is going to be the local store within another mile for you or something like that that you can all know ahead of time that this is going to be our meeting place if we can possibly get there so that we can make sure that our loved ones are okay we're going to open up the four to questions in just a few moments so if you have those be thinking of them we'll have microphones come around and we'll have that here in just a moment so Rick and Harold both I think really for you to based on what we're seeing in the latest research what are some of the things I can do that make a difference to my survivability long term other than moving somewhere but are there things that I can do with my property where I live and and how I just operate day to day that are going to increase my possible survivability if if the worst happens and Rick when she started well

I think we've already touched on some of it if you live here in Oklahoma in the springtime and there's a chance of thunderstorms in the forecast you need to be paying extra attention you need to be not changing your daily life every time there's a risk of severe weather but be mindful when there is that risk have multiple ways to get a warning things like that make a huge difference because the warnings are getting better and for the big tornadoes you may have 10 15 20 30 40 minutes of warning in some cases but that does no good if you can't get it so those those sources of information paying attention to the weather being plugged into multiple information sources another thing that you can do that that kind of ties back into Michael Ann's question a minute ago is lots of communities have a storm shelter registration program or you can actually register with the fire department of the emergency management office and say hey I've got a storm shelter here don't forget to come look for me if if something happens and a lot of communities have that in the

area so take advantage of that you know have a have a kid have a plan practice the plan think about it on a nice quiet sunny early March day when it's 55 degrees and there's no storms out in Western Oklahoma the more that you do that the more that you think days or weeks in advance every little bit you do days or weeks in advance is going to take off a huge amount of stress and a huge amount of tension when it comes to actually happening when that warning comes out your reaction should be automatic and it should be instant okay we've practiced I know what to do here's my shoes we got our jeans on we got our long sleeve shirt on there's my car keys wallet cell phones charged I know where to go and I'm going there you but that doesn't work you can't start doing that when the tornado warning is issued you have to do that today and those are the kinds of things I think of when I think of tangible things that all of us can do that will that will make a difference when it happens Harold I've had

some been seeing some things pop up about garage doors that I want to ask about that that garage doors often fail and cause problems for houses are there anything in terms of the way we actually where we live and what we build in terms of single-family homes that might help us survive sure well and a lot of this depends upon whether you're doing new construction or not I mean obviously if you if retrofitting is anything is much more expensive than than you can structure when my wife and I when we did an addition under our houses when we we did essentially everything we possibly could and then you want to make sure you've got a what they call a continuous load path through your house you want to make sure that the that the cell plate is attached to the foundation you've got nuts you got bolts with nuts on them yeah you want to put the nuts onto the bolts they don't always do that strap the strap those down that hopes hold the walls down to the floor if what are called hurricane clips on the on to the attaching your your roof to the walls those kinds of things on a a hundred thousand dollar house add five hundred to a thousand

dollars to the cost and they dramatically increase this the the load that takes to take to their house apart by basically a factor of 30 or 40 I mean you you've really added a lot to what what does and building an in resin and shelter when you when you do that and think about all the things about in terms of your space that you actually have in your home whether that is an an underground or in my wife in ice case my wife has had back in the problems and we realized there may come a time in life when three or four steps is she can't do it and so ours is actually the is is our walking closet to our off of our bedroom and those it's it's built to the to the FEMA standards but if my shelter goes all of central Oklahoma's gone because I mean it's gonna survive anything the guy who poured the concrete asked if you could come over to our house but that was but that was but that was it's the kind of thing you know it's it and the plans are easily available online if even if you're building even want to custom build it you take your plans to your architect and

your builder and they are very simple for them to follow and so those kinds of things making sure your house has that continuous load path garage doors tend to be a big point of failure because they you know if you think your garage door isn't you try not to have an anchor down to the ground into the ground all the time like like the walls of your house it's supposed to go up and down and so it tends to not do as well and once it once that is breached then basically the garage is gone but that's so you you can do some things for your construction that can really dramatically increase your chances and just know if you can't do new construction you're not doing new construction go back to those basic rules always you can when he's walls between you as possible as a tornado in a small interior room we we lived in the house I'm in for 14 years before we put in the in-residence shelter we had a very small interior hallway everybody in the family knew that's where we went and we used it a few times and and that was I think that was just and I was I was pretty comfortable if I if you do those things if you do the right thing even it

moderate construction house a moderately well-constructed house your chances survival are very very hot okay we're gonna open up to questions now and I have one final question for the panel when we when we wrap up here so just raise your hand a microphone we brought your way by Jim Johnson our program director at KGOU and Brian had since here operations manager so let's go at the front row there Justin Murray my question is actually for Harold and Rick for both y'all as we know that products have evolved over the years and we also include aviation as well as public information what steps and progress is being done to try to isolate the aviation format from the public so we can allow more public specific information understand the headings that come with product issuance but is there anything being done to make it more specific to the public and let me kind of translate that I think a little bit first by by by products basically what that means is is that is the information that is sent out by the National Weather Service the Norman

forecast office in different formats in different different audiences right and and the Weather Service is trying to add more value or add more impact information to all of our text information that we send out we traditionally call products things like the watches in the warnings watches for example tornado watches severe thunderstorm watches last year got new wording in them so now instead of just saying tornadoes large-town damaging winds may happen it'll say things like several tornadoes with a few intense tornadoes possible or large hail you know three inches in diameter larger our warnings the most of the tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings in the state of Oklahoma are changing later this month to include more impacts in those messages so we are working to get into the 20th and the 21st century hopefully with some of our products honestly our warnings haven't changed and the watches haven't changed substantially since the 60s and 70s they just don't

look a lot different and we we know a lot more information our challenge right now is learning how to speak English and learning how to talk in a way where people get it where they understand it and that they do something about it you know we can we handle and I can spout off words all day long but it doesn't you know if it doesn't get someone up off the couch it doesn't matter so I think we are working in that direction we got a long way to go though okay another question I Sherry King I was curious you had mentioned about your in-house shelter and so you believe that those are going to be safe for I mean just seems like the tornadoes have become more fierce and stronger and so you think for the future that those are going to be a safe place sure we don't we actually don't have any evidence when we look at tornadoes that they've increased in intensity at all that that the records really don't don't show that but that we certainly there was an extensive study done after more and Joplin and I think that the Texas

tech people who led the way in developing the guidelines basically they surveyed every storm shelter that was hit in more they walked the entire the entire path to get every shelter and none of the shelters that were built to standards had any problems at all I mean there were some pop marks in the concrete on the side were missiles that hit the outside but that's okay you know the the whole house was gone and this wonderful shelter was sitting there and they found the same thing in Joplin and Tuscaloosa there was actually a I didn't know this until until a few weeks ago there was an apartment complex just east of the Walmart and the lows or was it Home Depot Home Depot in Joplin which were both destroyed lots of fatalities there and this this apartment complex had been built well above code and there were a bunch of people in that apartment complex and they were all perfectly fine so there nothing has changed

at all we the information we're conveying tonight is the same exact information in fact Galen Kitch the emergency manager for more and I were in this very room a little bit over a year ago giving a tornado preparedness presentation and the information we share that night is exactly the same as what we're sharing tonight nothing has changed we don't believe tornadoes are getting necessarily more intense or worse safe rooms are just as safe today as they were last year if I've got an in-ground shelter in my garage if I had my if I had a choice I would have an above ground safe room because it's just ease of use and everything else I trust them 100 percent Michael I want you to weigh in on that on this on this too as a as an as an emergency manager you know for the state of Oklahoma what what do you see in terms of shelters and how people are using them and their safety well I'd have to echo some things that are already said and that is that again we did come back and look at the places of people who did have the shelters before the tornadoes hit last

last May and there were none of them that didn't do their job if you will we also saw in the case of people who didn't have shelters and in a number of cases they survived again being in that lowest center most away from windows place and but but the cases that people didn't survive or were badly injured those are the ones that always stand out we need to remember that again it like they're saying that the tornadoes have not gotten more mean more more evil it's just I think it comes back a little bit to the fact that we're just so overloaded with information these days and we have to again back to the planning piece know how to sift that out and know what we can trust and what we need to question so that again we can apply that to our planning process and keep our families as safe as possible it's important to remember that even in the most intense tornadoes the area that's actually got the highest intensity is

still relatively small it's only a small part of a of an EF-5 tornado is actually EF-5 or EF-4 damage and the the from the more tornado last year there have been some work done that was around 98 and a half 99 percent of the people who were in structures that were EF-4 EF-5 survived that's important to remember you that we get messages occasionally that you know if you don't have a special built shelter or you can't get underground you're not going to survive that's just simply not true now if you've got the shelter or you can get underground bully for you that's your your chances are way up but that doesn't mean that if you don't have those shelters that and you go you know boy there's nothing I can do or I better just start I knew of a young lady last year who who called her mother to tell her she was getting ready to run from her house because her car wasn't working and so she was ready to run away from her house because she couldn't get underground now fortunately she's called her mother

and those of you who are mothers in the room will know what the mother told her to do and she went back in the house and was fine you know it may I guarantee it's not a fun place to be when the tornado hits the house but your chances of survival are actually very good if you do the simple safety advice if you get caught out in traffic things start to get a little squirrely right there and there were a lot of people on May 31st who never were near a tornado the number of traffic accidents that occurred and just all of that that went on that they was was was really large and high blood pressure and pressure and people who who drown because they tried to they tried to get into drainage ditches for shelter I think Carol brought up an interesting point and we talk about the the May 20th tornado being an EF-5 tornado we did an extensive almost door-to-door damage survey of that tornado we surveyed over 4,200 individual structures nine of those had EF-5 damage nine out of 4,200 and something and the area of EF-5 damage was essentially about a house wide

or a lot wide the whole thing is not an EF-5 tornado and you know you are you're gonna be fine where you are shelter in place is still the is still the message another question or businesses and other institutions do you have an idea of how many days during during the really severe storm season we have tornado watches in central Oklahoma or where we can get that information because for people who are maybe working on plans to either get people to shelter or shelter in place it might be kind of nice to know well how much downtime are we gonna have if we do that kind I knew I should have studied for this because we just we just worked with the storm prediction center to produce some maps of the average number of tornado watches moderate risk high risk light risk I think for tornado watches for the central local home area it's it's ten or less so if that's a gauge of anything per year per year average per year and again I'm

maybe a little bit off of my numbers but I think that's a that's the ballpark so we're not I mean it feels like and I know it's gonna feel like at the spring that it feels like you know we're being bombarded by storms and there's a risk of severe weather every single day and they're interrupting TV and the weather services talking and but it's we really don't have when you look at it even here in Oklahoma the number of days where you really need to pay attention and the number of minutes where you really need to take shelter is is tiny and if you just do it if you're an average for central local home area and one to two tornado warnings a year on average sometimes last year Cleveland County had 13 tornado warnings that was an odd year if you take shelter every time there's a tornado warning that's what an hour and a half two hours tops out of your life it's worth it another question yeah hi David Rimer obviously last May 31st we saw a mass exit is out of the Oklahoma City

Metro area much again to safety advice and obviously I don't need to go and do what happened you both were watching I know is there any plans on emphasizing this season not to do that or are there any changes in terms of I guess your language on why it's important to stay inside your structure and not attempt to evacuate ahead of a thunderstorm or a tornado I good good question and of course you're referring to the panic that occurred back on May 31st and everything I would see this coming season is going to be overly sensitive no matter what the interest and the anxiety that I was all going to come because of the next storm season is going to be concerned everyone I anticipate we'll all be out there with the same message we've always had which is that you need to have that plan where you're going to be safe no matter what place

you're at when whenever the warning is handed down and of course you decide that when the watch is issued or when two or three days ahead of a very concerning day national weather service and other partners are out there saying you need to take heed to this information as far as keeping people from getting in their cars and trying to outrun a tornado it's a very difficult thing to change those behaviors sometimes but we'll be out there preaching the same thing we've said all along again you know personally how the situation that's upon you but again we all react better we all make better choices if we plan to head and I think most times and I think they'd agree with me you are always going to be most always going to be and of safer situation if you are in a building rather than in a vehicle and and and from the weather service perspective our message hasn't changed at all at one o'clock in the

afternoon on May 31st we told people don't be in the roads after four o'clock we told people if you need if you don't feel safer you are drive now if you wait till the warning is issued it's too late that's the same message last year as it is this year you are it's a horrible place to be in a car I was stuck in traffic I had another talk I did earlier today and I was stuck in traffic trying to get home and I was stressed because I was late I cannot imagine the feeling of being stuck in traffic with a huge tornadic supercell with softball size hail and flooding rains and who knows what else in there bearing down on you it's just you know we need to we need to transfer some of the things we do for winter weather over to severe weather if it's a bad if it's a bad winter storm or if it's if the roads covered in snow you know maybe you leave work early or maybe you don't travel to maybe you don't go get the the light fixture you know maybe wait till tomorrow to do that and we need to do that more

retornados to it's so easy to avoid being caught in that situation if you just pay attention and to me one of the things about about May 31st is that I wish I understood why it happened I mean I know there's there's there's some aspect of specific messaging on the day that came out but how much of it was essentially you know post-traumatic stress we'd had that we'd had the the 19th and the 20th and locally we'd actually had we'd been in tornado watch so I think the 29th of the 30th so there's been and nothing big happened on those days but there were watches and I remember having to make minor changes in plans for that and we saw back on May 24th 2011 two days after the Joplin tornado it wasn't as bad but there was an awful lot of panic behavior on on that day at least in Norman and so that's one of those things that we don't the these kinds of events are are at this point at least seem to be so unusual I don't think we actually know why it happened and if we if we can't

fear a why it happened it's really hard to figure out how to get the messaging right to get people to not do that what we know is that people that did at last May 20th or May 31st who felt like that was a good thing to do they're alive today or whatever their you know their reasoning is they're probably do it again we know people are gonna do it people been doing this for years and years and years it didn't start last year we just hope people will look at what happened last year and think twice about it there's cases where you have to go somewhere but you can't wait until if you wait until the warning is out it's too late if you're the only person who goes it's great but you know 500,000 of your closest friends decide to leave at the same time you know that's a whole different ballgame it's been a long time since I saw eight years old and we had our car lifted up off the road when I was eight years old trying to get to a shelter from our perfectly nice home during during a storm another question yes I'm and masters I'm with the Pioneer Library system and welcome to the more public library public libraries are public

buildings but they're not storm shelters they're not safety shelters and we worry about our customers and our and our employees and struggle with the question of what time how much time ahead if we're going to close the building so people can find a safer place to be and then after a certain point we don't you shouldn't be out on the road so we do the best we can but by their very nature libraries are open with lots of potentially flying objects in them and so what advice can you give to us and our customers regarding being in places like libraries during during the storms or or how much time in advance do we need to have to close well in most cases for the big days for like a May 20th of May 31st we're gonna be able to provide you with some fairly

specific windows of time where we think it's most likely to happen on May 20th we were saying it's going to be from two to five that was the main window it was later on May 31st but hours in advance that's about as good as it's going to get a tornado watch will come out at some point it'll be in effect for six hours and it'll cover two-thirds of the state of Oklahoma and that's not going to give you a lot more detail it really just comes down again to monitoring the weather on May 20th we knew the storms are going to form just the county west of us here and it was going to be happened very fast and happen early in the day there is no one-size-fits-all answer to that we know that and my clan can maybe address this too we know that more and more libraries schools hospitals the more medical center had two to three hundred people that didn't really belong there on May 20th when the tornado hit our building had 1100 people in it on May 31st we are not a tornado shelter there are 8,000

people in the OU campus taking shelter none of those buildings are tornado shelter so that's it we could do a whole other show on that that's a huge issue and it's a real dilemma because people who don't feel safe where they are want to go to a building and they think a building like the one we're in right now they're with other people it's a public building it's open it's safe but as you know this is not a shelter my clan I think we're exactly right first of all there's not a one-size-fits-all like that each storm system has its own personality and its own dangers I would imagine and its own circumstances to when it's going to hit how it's going to be and all that and again we continue to look to the people who understand the science to gain their knowledge I think more than anything it's just to be ready that as much as I can get out there and preach that you need to stay home you need a shelter in place you need to have a plan there are going to be times when people to shove that aside even if they believed it the day before the tornado came

through the day of the tornado that they've got a warning on now they're going to try to seek refuge somewhere else and so I think that we could say easily we should shut your doors and don't worry about but we can't do that of course so you have to have a plan businesses whether it's a hospital a library whatever how you're going to handle that and for me one of the first things I do is that I'd make sure that you would identify where's my staff going a very good point is it because those are the people that you at one level you actually have a real responsibility for and you're also know they're going to be in your building and we ran into the concept of when we were looking through Rick and I revolved a project looking at the at the Norman Public Schools plan and from having had some other discussions we learned the places that essentially have red-yellowing green areas in their buildings and red means they don't think that's survivable and you basically your staff should know you know okay these are the green dot rooms if we have to do something in a hurry this is

where everybody goes if we have to use the yellow okay but we don't want to use that and we sure the heck don't want to get into the red areas and so basically your people with a little bit of training would know okay me I I've this the first time I've been in the more library I've been in the Norman library a lot more you know I know where the bathrooms are I know where some of the other areas inside the offices are I know where I I know where staff can all go in there and where customers can go and everybody including that you know that that teenage volunteer who's working that evening at your office at your building needs to know okay these are the places to go so that we can get people into them other question from the audience yeah how fast is it turning to go alone to ground 30 miles an hour 50 miles an hour I think there's that question yes yes that's gonna say yeah Harold on average probably about 30 miles an hour the the fastest ones we know about run on the order 70 miles an hour yeah but 30's more common and 70 around here 70's very very rare that's more of a a winter time southeastern U.S. kind of a kind of phenomena most of

I'd say 30 to 40 miles an hour but it's never at a constant speed they're constantly changing the alerino tornado went for moving 25 miles an hour to moving 50 miles an hour in the space of about five minutes then became then did a complete circle over I 40 the more tornado did a complete loop a complete circle over the seven eleven at fourth and telephone road so they never go on a straight line and they never travel at constant speed but 30 is about the average and and one little one little thing as long as that I want I want to make sure there may I one of the misconceptions that you know about that's very local to this place is that people think that the Warren theaters magic the Warren theater was basically not hit by the tornado it's survived as well as it did because it didn't get hit by the tornado because I'm pretty sure there'll be people who will be showing up at the Warren when there's a tornado watch this year and that's just not a very good idea the the difference in the winds that the medical center got and the theater got was

huge which which just goes to speak to the fact of how difficult it is to to to really know where how things are going to end up I mean I could keep saying be prepared be prepared is another question or to while we're looking for another question just to speak to that we are blessed and fortunate here to have incredible TV meteorologists there's nowhere else like it on the planet where we have such intense complete comprehensive coverage of everything that's going on and I mean that in a good way but sometimes we're a victim of our own success that we heard story I had a story after the May 20th tornado someone that was near or at the more medical center they kept hearing someone on TV saying it's gonna hit the Warren theater it's gonna hit the Warren theater and they felt a sense of relief that it was not going to hit the more medical center well if you know where those two things are there's like you know a parking lot in between them we're not that good and you should always you should never take the times that you see on television you should

never take the exact precise street intersection locations as the absolute truth there's always very fuzzy edges on all that so you cannot assume well they say it's gonna hit at 19th and telephone road I live at a block up the road so I'm okay no you need to there's a big buffer around that even here even with the close radar even with the coverage you need to always assume that the information is not as precise as it seems like it is yeah and on the May 19th tornado one of the TV stations I was hearing was talking about that that the the circulation was gonna cross the Canadian River at Lindsay and and where Lindsay Street would go west and I go okay I'm good on where that is and the next time they said Maine and I'm going well there's only a mile north south between there but with the way the river bins there's actually four miles difference and I live between Lindsay and Maine so if the if the

circulation is crossing the river at Lindsay we're in the shelter if it's crossing at Maine we're we have no problems at all at home and I started realizing even though it's a really small difference when you look if I'm if I'm a TV guy looking at the at my radar map that actually looks like it's not much of a difference in reality it was a huge difference for me personally at my house and and that so they maybe you know they're looking to the big map and they got a big blobby radar echo their precision and they're able to locate the exact locations is not as good as they as Rick was saying is not as good as say that are if you know the local terrain you may actually notice that at times that they're off by you know okay so they're off by one pixel on the radar that's really all we're talking about that's not a very big error in terms of radar reading the radar but if you live in if you live on either side of that pixel that's a big difference and we have the exact same limitations all radar all meteorologists have the same problems we don't put exact times in

warnings we don't put exact street intersection locations unless we you know or high 100% confident that's where it is so it damaged report yeah so just because just yeah precision does not always equal accuracy understood I don't want to close with a question to our panel and this is kind of an after the fact question again as as a research disaster recovery one of the terms that I've come across and I hear is the term resilience and my question to the panel and just let's just pass it around sorry with Michael and what makes a person a family a business a community resilient have the ability to bounce back more quickly after a devastating storm well I think the number one thing is the planning again making sure that they have a plan in place how they're going to handle a situation that comes their way none of us can imagine exactly how I'm talking about severe storms here tonight exactly how that severe storm is going to impact us but we stand a better chance of being successful and being

resilient and being able to get back on our feet the more we do to prepare for that should it happen and of course you got to do the preparation in advance and we do see that with people who we're not trying to scare people or cause them to do things that are unrealistic we're just saying take a little time have a plan be prepared have that disaster supply kid in place and stay informed it those are pretty easy steps and again as already been discussed here tonight we're not talking about a huge block in your lifespan here we're talking about a fairly insignificant amount of time but it can make a huge difference whether you are badly injured or something worse than that and again help you and your family get back on your feet to work through that recovery process because there's all too many people here and more in other places across Oklahoma can testify it's a tough road to get back on your feet after you've seen everything taken from you because of a tornado or a wildfire or any of the

other threats that face our wonderful state I think my clan hit on all the all the key points I think we learn a lot from looking at past events so I think we can learn a lot by looking at how the people of more responded to this event in Oklahoma City Newcastle Karney Shawnee everyone that was affected by tornadoes last year how they responded I think Harold's got a great story I know if he's going to share it about the difference that people the difference of what people needed or wanted or looked for in the immediate aftermath of the tornado someone who had been through other tornadoes and more versus new people we learn from every experience and I think you're going to be more resilient if you if you thought about it in advance if you talk to your insurance agent make sure your coverage is up to date and you've got everything you need or your important papers ready to go the more you do before the storms are on radar the calmer of experience is going to be and you're going to be more able to bounce back after that because if you're not prepared and everything

is just completely chaotic in your life is just completely destroyed with no structure no planning around that it's it's going to be very hard but I think again we've been saying all night just think about it in advance plan and prepare I will tell the story but before I get to one thing on the community level I think is you know do good buildings and I don't mean you've got to go build a reinforced concrete house for everybody going just do simple things you know I have a friend who does a lot of damage surveying he says yeah he'd like to see better codes but before we had better codes let's just build what we have right now to code as a starting point something simple like that you know actually put the nuts on the bolts kind of thing use nuts and bolts rather than nails and the story Rick was talking about was my my daughter was was home from college on on May 20th and she you know she did one of those things that makes you makes you proud as a parent you know she said you know I'm just home for a couple of weeks I'm not doing anything a lot of people

are gonna have trouble tonight the first night at the she went up to journey church to work as a as a volunteering just help out at the thing because she said you know I can I'm gonna say if I if I do if I stay home I just gonna sleep in in the morning I might as well go up there and work all night well it took about a couple hours before she was sort of the number one clothes sort of by size of stuff that was there and one of the things she found in talking to some of the the people who'd been through May 3rd was that the that who had been through is out on the relief side at May 3rd the people had been affected by May 3rd came in and asked for different stuff than the people who hadn't been through May 3rd the May 3rd people all came in and asked for plastic bags so they could go take care of whatever belongings they still had that weren't ruined the people who hadn't been through May 3rd came in and asked for some clothes they could change clothes and she said it was one of those they started realizing they started then suggesting to the to the people who hadn't been through May 3rd you want to take some trash bags so you want to pick up your stuff and that was one of those things that people who would people had learned and and and responded differently when they went

through the second event well that's our time for now and thank you to Michael Ann Newton deputy director with state office of emergency management Rick Smith warning coordination meteorologist with the Norman forecast office of the National Weather Service and Harold Brooks senior scientist with the National severe storm laboratory providing just tons of information to help us prepare for the spring storm season let's give him a round of applause for all their time I also want to point out that the American Red Cross has some information in the back if you would like to start your preparedness if you're not there yet they have some great information there also thanks to the more public library for hosting us there also others to thank including the KGOU staff and management for getting everything set up recorded and otherwise managed it truly takes all of us working together to bring you events like this and I also want to point out in particular one person Kate Carlton Kate stand up she is our reporter for the Oklahoma tornado project and you can find her work in more information online at tornado dot KGOU dot org it's what you're seeing on

the screen and also if you have that story idea or have some information you like to share with Kate you can find her contact information online for KGOU I'm Kurt Gourney thank you all so much