Tornado Talk Episode 1: April 27, 2011 Super Outbreak
Dan: It has been 5 years since the deadly tornado outbreak in the south,
and our guests today know all too much about it.
Jen: On our first episode of “Tornado Talk”, the author of “What Stands in a
Storm”, Kim Cross.
Kim Cross: The power of a story to make people heal and bring maybe
some closure to something that was so big. It’s really hard to understand
what happened and why.
Dan: We’ll talk with Sabrina Sentell, who was in Tuscaloosa when the
twister hit on April 27.
Sabrina Sentell: The building we were in was a block on every side from
where some kind of damage was. It’s just a miracle that nothing happened
to us.
Dan: Portia Jones found a spot in her home for she and her family to hide.
It saved her life.
Portia Jones: My family member, he texted and said, “How are y’all” and
we were like “well, we’re trapped in the house” and they were like, “we’re
on our way” and I’m like “you can’t get to us.”
Dan: And Andy Green who says for the rest of his life, there’s one memory
that will be etched in his mind.
Andy Green: As I recall, I took a picture and actually posted it on
Facebook and wrote something like, “look at what happened in my town.”
It was just—it was unbelievable. I’m actually getting a little choked up just
talking about it now.
Jen: And meteorologist James Spann, who comforted viewers through a
nightmare scenario when an outbreak of tornadoes were tearing through
Alabama.
James Spann: We were so busy. I didn’t have time to really think about
the historical impact of the day or the potential historic impact. We were
busy.
Dan: Welcome to Tornado Talk, where today we reflect on what happened
5 years ago. And, Jen, this is our first episode together. I’m excited to be
with you.
Jen: Me too
Dan: That day, I can remember it so well. I wasn’t on radio anywhere that
day in the area that was affected. You, however, were. I was in Kansas
City. You were in Atlanta working for The Weather Channel.
Jen: Yeah, and I was broadcasting that afternoon and evening for WRSA
in Huntsville, AL. But, one of the things that day that took us by surprise
was the strength of storms that had already formed early in the morning,
Dan, on April 27th. There was already widespread damage that had
occurred across parts of Mississippi, into, already, Northern and Central
Alabama and Southern Middle Tennessee. The morning storms actually
caused power outages affecting not only the public but also several NOAA
weather radio all hazards transmitters were down. This was already during
the morning time. And then of course the afternoon and the evening
happened. And there were several damaging tornadoes on the ground at
the same time. There were 62 that day just in Alabama. And I remember
vividly covering the tornado outbreak through Northern Alabama. Through
Cullman, through Arab, through Huntsville. It was just a crazy afternoon
and just a sad afternoon as well.
Some of the statistics and I got this out of a National Weather Service
assessment on historic tornadoes. 4 day period from April 25 through the
28. There were more than 200 tornadoes in 5 Southeastern states. The
deadliest part of the outbreak was during that afternoon/evening time, April
27, 122 tornadoes. 313 precious souls losing their life across Central and
Northern Mississippi, Central and Northern Alabama into Eastern
Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia and Northern Georgia. There were 15
violent tornadoes either EF4 or EF5 and then 8 had path lengths in excess
of 50 miles.
Dan: Unbelievable! I can remember the radar screen and what it looked
like. And we have our first guest.
Jen: Dan, there’s one person who has pored through hours of research to
learn everything she could about what happened between April 25 and April
27. She’s received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists,
Society of American Travel Writers and the Media Industry Newsletter.
You might have read her work in Outside, Southern Living, Bicycling,
Runner’s World, USA Today, ESPN.com, and she’s syndicated at
CNN.com. The author of “What Stands in a Storm,” Kim Cross. Kim,
thank you for being with us!
Kim: Thank you for having me.
Jen: We’ve been focusing in on April 27 because that was the peak day of
the tornadoes that came through most of the Deep South with most of it
into the state of Alabama. But it was a 3 day event. And I am currently
reading your book and it’s a gripping read. You blend in the weather
situation in detail with personal stories of those affected by this outbreak.
Now, you’re not a meteorologist, correct?
Kim: No, I’m not.
Jen: Okay. You would not know that by reading your book. You got the
weather right! And that is so refreshing because a lot of times folks do not
do the research on what was happening and so you took on a big event
here. And you can tell that you did your homework. How did you gather
your research to write about this momentous event?
Kim: Well, that’s a great question, and thank you for noticing that. I
wanted really, really badly to get everything right. As you probably know,
Chuck Doswell is one of the most renowned scientists covering tornadoes
or researching tornadoes in the country, and I read his blog, and he reviews
every book written about weather that’s out there. Whenever something’s
wrong, he points it out and so very early on I went to Chuck and said, “Will
you help me get the science right?” and he had been misquoted or had
given 2 hour interviews out of which a sound byte was used so many times
that he said, “I don’t give interviews any more. But, out of the kindness of
my heart, I’ll email back and forth with you so that way we at least have a
record of what was said.” (laugh)
And I said, “Okay, I’ll take whatever I can get.” Before that though, I really
felt like I needed to start at the very basics, so I went to the library and I
checked out children’s books on tornadoes, so I could just start at the very
basics. And then, I worked my way up to meteorology text books before I
felt confident enough to actually waste a meteorologist’s time with
questions that I couldn’t answer myself from a book.
Jen: Right.
Kim: So, I tried to do my homework so I could use their time, and at least
speak some of the language when I went to them. I interviewed a lot of
people. I talked to James. I talked to Brian Peters, Tim Coleman. I talked
to Jim Stefkovich, gosh, people at the National Weather Service. Really,
anyone who would talk to me, I wanted a variety of perspectives on the
event. And, then, when it came to writing the science, you know it’s tricky
because weather is a hard thing to describe because, as you know, it
occurs in 4 dimensions: 3 dimensions plus time. And it’s largely invisible
unless there is debris or precipitation in it. And I really wanted to do with
the weather what John McPhee does so well with geology. He makes
geology really come alive for a lay reader by using really interesting
metaphors. And he’s kind of one of my literary crushes, and so I wanted to
do that with meteorology. I just kind of went for it, and then I went back and
I asked meteorologists to read it. Chuck Doswell was so kind because he
gets really upset when people get the science wrong and I said, “Chuck, I
really want to be the first one who really gets it right. And I can’t do that
without your help or the help of someone like you and because I know
you’re gonna read this anyway to point out what’s wrong after I write it, why
don’t we do that first?”
Jen: Right.
Kim: So, we don’t spread any more misinformation, and he did, and he
was a wonderful, candid, blunt reader. A couple times he said, “Some of
your concepts are seriously flawed, and I normally don’t like this kind of
flowery writing.” And I was like, “Thank you! Great! Let’s fix it!” So, I think
that that was really instrumental in getting it right. I asked others as well,
but I think Chuck was really my best reader, and I was so afraid of
transposing a number or having just a typo that may be, I didn’t think Chuck
would be necessarily checking for typos and numbers and that sort of thing.
Maybe he was going to read for concepts. So, I have a fact checker who
was trained by National Geographic and I hired her. It’s actually David
Quammens – the famous science writer, his personal fact checker. She’s
very expensive so I had to sell my mountain bike to be able to afford her.
Jen: Oh, wow!
Kim: I know! And she caught a lot of things as well. And so I think
between the 2 of them, they really did a fantastic job, and I’m so grateful
and could not have done it without their help.
Jen: I was on the air that day in Huntsville, AL on WRSA. I was at The
Weather Channel at the time, and it rocked my world to be on the air and
broadcasting that and just thinking about everyone who was being affected,
and I was reading your book, and you were talking about Cullman, AL.
Immediately, I’m zoomed back into the booth. You captured everything so
well, and everything just came back to the forefront, but you’ve written it in
such a wonderful way that you weed in the weather and then you talk about
the personal parts of everyone.
I was reading on your website. You transcribed all of James Spann’s
television broadcasts from that day, is that right?
Kim: Oh my gosh! It took days! And lots of coffee!
Jen: Oh, wow!
Kim: I needed to start with a timeline. And I thought that would be a
perfect thing because he gives wall to wall coverage. There are no
commercials. And someone had taken the time to upload that to YouTube,
in 15 minute increments. Within those 15 minute increments, I made little
time markers as the time ticker ticked down and I wrote down everything he
said and what that gave me was a very accurate sense of the event
unfolding and a great sense of what we knew and what we didn’t know at
any given moment. It also gave me verbatim dialogue, things that actually
came right out of his mouth. And he gave me a sense of what people were
looking at any given moment. I wanted that sense of uncertainty and
tension that people really felt that day. So, I went in and transcribed
everything he said for pretty much the whole day, everything that was
online. And then on top of that, I was able to overlay other transparent
sources. For example, there’s a YouTube video of 2 amateur storm
chasers who are driving right in the path of the tornado. They don’t know it
yet. But they virtually drive the whole tornado path through Tuscaloosa.
And James Spann is actually playing on their radio. His TV broadcast is
playing on the radio so I could actually sync whatever he’s saying with the
timeline I created when they say something and I can know exactly where
they were, when they were saying it based on the timeline of James
Spann’s video. And then I could weave the two together, and I found that
really compelling, because that connected 2 characters who don’t meet, but
they are intercepting because they’re listening to his broadcast in the car
and in some cases reacting to it. There are other cases of that with videos
that weren’t on YouTube that were privately shared with me of other storm
chasers. This was really, really helpful.
There were examples of other YouTube videos that he was or wasn’t in the
background for but that gave me a great sense of what the sky looked like
that day from different angles, what people were seeing, what it sounded
like, what the sky looked like before and after, what people were saying and
all of this is notable because these sources didn’t really exist 10 years ago
and this book couldn’t have been written 10 years ago.
Jen: Right.
Kim: When Sebastian Junger wrote, “The Perfect Storm”, he really only
had to go on a little bit of information and some interviews with recollected
dialogue. I had an [unknown] which when it came to material.
Jen: That is amazing. I mean that had to take so much time to do. You
did such a wonderful job, putting that all together, and I even noticed too,
you were grabbing people’s Facebook posts and different things like that to
capture their emotion during the time when they were huddled in a shelter
or in their hallway or whatever it may be and they were putting comments
out on Facebook and went through all of that as well. That was very
impactful. Now, you are a graduate of the University of Alabama.
Kim: That’s right. I went there as an undergrad and then went off to work
and then came back 4 years later as a grad student.
Jen: Okay. What led you to go ahead and take on this endeavor? What
inspired you to write this book?
Kim: Well, really I was working at Southern Living at the time, and we had
to think, what could we say 4 months from now which is the soonest we
could get a story in the magazine. What can we say 4 months from now
that is not gonna be old news, and that people are going to want to read?
And that’s going to matter. And so I sent my team out of reporters and
photographers into something like 5 or 6 states, and we all reconvened.
We saw what was out there. We reconvened and we said well what are
some of the common threads here and my driving question was how do
people cope with tragedy? What are their coping mechanisms? So we
found 3 common themes. And they were faith, food, and fellowship. And I
thought, that is meaningful, because anyone who has ever been through a
hurricane or 9-11 or a personal storm can relate to that, and so I wanted
readers to have this “me too” moment. Like, “oh yeah! I’ve felt that too.
I’ve been the recipient of the kindness of strangers.” So, we wrote the
story, and also I should mention that Rick Bragg the famous southern
author who wrote “All over but the Shoutin',” and many, many fantastic
books. He was a columnist for the magazine, and I was his editor. He still
is a columnist for Southern Living, and he lived in Tuscaloosa. And so I
immediately called him as a friend, and said, “Are you okay?” And he said,
“Yes. We were not in Tuscaloosa when this happened, but our street’s
been hit really bad.”
The second question was, “Can you please write something about it for us,
because this is huge and you’re personally affected.” And so he and I
worked on it together. He really did a lot of coaching because I hadn’t
worked on a feature really this big in awhile, if ever. What we produced got
a lot of letters from readers who said, “This made me cry. This is the first
time in 30 years of reading Southern Living that I’ve ever cried while
reading the magazine.” Or, “This made me proud to be Southern.” Or “me
too. I saw this in my own neighborhood.” And so, those letters really were
what inspired me to write the book, because I realized the power of a story.
The power of a story to make people heal, and bring maybe some closure
to something that was so big. It’s really hard to understand what happened
and why. I thought there might be some healing in that understanding. I
thought, too, that the nation really needed to know what happened because
this was our Katrina. This was our 9-11. But most of the nation doesn’t
know about it, because the news cycle moved on to the Joplin tornado and
Osama Bin Laden’s assassination.
Jen: Right.
Kim: So, there are large parts of the population that have no recollection of
the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded weather. So, I thought that this
was an important story to tell, and I looked around and there are great
books about hurricanes and Nor’easters and other events but I didn’t find
one that I thought lived up to that caliber for a tornado. And so, I thought,
this is a great opportunity to go a little bit into the science, and teach a little
bit about something that’s very misunderstood. There’s so many wives’
tales and myths out there that need to be busted. But it’s also just a
compelling, and to me it was more than just about the tornado and the
weather, it was about how the devastation really created these everyday
heroes and these examples of strangers helping strangers and just
everyday people doing extraordinary things that were so touching and so
meaningful in the wake of the storm.
So, you mentioned the use of Facebook posts and comments and this is
really important, because as an author, it’s a real challenge to try to bring a
character to life who is no longer with us to be interviewed. To the same
degree that you can bring a character to life who is around to be
interviewed, and these Facebook posts and tweets and social media
messages allow you to get into the head of a character who is not with us
any more at a very precise moment, and I think that they’re so poignant
because I left them unedited. So you can hear their voices, and sense their
personality in the spellings of the words, and the misspellings, and the lack
of punctuation. Those Facebook posts and the text messages, the text
conversations that were shared with some of the families of [the] adult
children who died, those, I think, were the most poignant parts of the book,
because they give voice to the characters that are suddenly able to speak
for themselves. I think that that took a lot of trust for the families to share
that with me, but I think that’s where you’ll really get to know them in the
book.
Jen: Kim, thank you so much for being here. Kim Cross, the author of
“What Stands in a Storm”. Kim, how can we let people know how to get
your book?
Kim: Oh, well, thank you so much. The book is sold anywhere books are
sold. Generally, it’s online. And the big box stores but I always encourage
people to visit your local bookstore and support them. Keeps them in
business. It’s available also as an audio book and an eBook and at your
library.
Jen: Thank you, Kim, so very much.
(Stinger)
Jen: Coming up, Meteorologist James Spann…host of the Podcast
Weatherbrains, @spann on Twitter and seen on television in Birmingham…
he relives the day on television – April 27, 2011.
Dan: Sabrina Sentell was in Tuscaloosa the day the tornado hit, and the
pictures of the damage and the destruction, she says, are still fresh in her
mind.
What were you doing that day?
Sabrina: Well, I’d taken my son to the dentist, and my ex-mother in law
had called me and said, “You all just come up here. The weather’s fixin’ to
get bad. Just come up to our office.” So, I went up to Sentell Engineering
and were sitting around there and watching James Spann, who is our
meteorologist in the area that everybody kind of watches and listens to
when the weather gets bad. And I happened to walk out of the front of the
office, which from the front of their office you can actually see the top of
Bryant Denny stadium. And I could hear this noise. I didn’t know at the
time that’s what it was, but what they’re saying was that it was so big that
we could hear it when it was like almost a county away.
So, we could still kinda hear the wind and stuff, but it was a little different.
And so, I went in and I told them what I heard, and about that time James
Spann said that it was going to hit Bryant Denny Stadium. We went and
got in the kitchen area, which the lights flickered, and we heard something,
but we had all the doors shut on the outside so we couldn’t really hear. We
stepped out, and the only thing we saw at that time was the roof of the high
school football stadium across the road had been blown off. But that’s all
we could see.
So, we all go back in, and we decide we’re gonna try to go home, and this
is where my story really starts. When we came across the bridge over
McFarland Blvd., and we looked down toward McFarland and 15th street,
my sons were in 4th grade and 8th grade. They were in the car with me.
When I looked, I could tell that it was just terrible and I remember telling
them, “Don’t look. I don’t know what’s down there. Don’t look!” I
remember telling them that, and just thinking how lucky we were, and then
about a month later, I was driving down McFarland at night, and just the
darkness, because all of the electricity in Forest Lake, and all those places
had not been restored, and when you had to go through there at night, it
was just--dark. It was, I mean compared to what it is now, and even before,
it was just--eerie, and you just got this feeling that it was almost like it was
still there.
Dan: Thank you so much, Sabrina, for joining us.
Portia Jones was a
little too close for comfort that day, too, Jen, and so was her husband. As
luck would have it, they made it to a place of safety in the nick of time.
Portia: I decided to just go look out my front window. I had like a pear tree
in the front yard and there was a bird and it was just like kind of burying
itself into the tree and I was like, “that is different”. But I looked up at the
sky and it had like little fingers pointing out of it and I yelled to my husband,
I said, “It’s turned, it’s turned, it’s coming this way!” I took off running, and I
ran into my bedroom closet, and he didn’t believe me, so he took off and
ran outside to the backyard to film it, because he felt we were getting a
good view of it. I was screaming, “We don’t have a good view, it’s coming
straight for us!” I could see it coming, it was like moving slow. It was like it
was coming straight for you, but it was moving slow. He still didn’t believe
me, and then all of a sudden he yelled that we have debris, and I was like,
“that’s not debris, that’s it!”
And so, he ran back into the house and he ran into the bedroom and about
time he hit the bedroom, it was hitting the house and like bursting out the
windows and stuff. He dove into the closet, and then my dog was not in my
closet yet, so I was trying to get out and get the dog, and he wouldn’t let me
but then the dog, she finally made it her way, and we shut the closet door,
and it sounded like this strong wind was hitting the house, and I didn’t
realize the windows had broke when he was diving into the closet. It just
sounded like strong wind, and then it just stopped. I didn’t want to open the
door, so I went ahead and called 911 and told them, “I think we’ve been
hit.” And she’s like, “Well, where are you?” and I said, “I’m in the closet with
the door shut. I haven’t opened it yet.” And she’s like, “well, open up the
door and tell me what you see.” And I opened up the door and I said,
“We’re trapped in the house. Everything just about came down. We’re
stuck in here.” I just remember climbing our way out of the house, and it
was like bright and sunny like nothing ever happened.
Dan: You and your family survived, and then you learned something
magical, you didn’t have any idea about this.
Portia: At the time the tornado hit, I was 3 weeks pregnant and did not
know it. And I found out like exactly a week later that I was expecting and
that was like really early. And so I grew up and called him “the tornado
baby” – he is 4 years old now. He’s as tough as nails.
Dan: What’s his name?
Portia: His name is De Angelo. Just like the angel.
Dan: Oh yeah! Well, tell De Angelo hello. Give him a big hug for us, and
we are glad that you and your entire family are all okay. Portia, thank you
so much.
Dan: Andy Green was on his way back into Tuscaloosa. He wasn’t there
while the tornado hit. But he saw the aftermath. What did it look like?
Andy: I went to school at the university. I’ve still got some friends who live
there in town, and so as soon as I found out what had happened, I just put
a quick word out to some friends saying, “look, I’m gonna go over and just
try and help with relief efforts. I live in Metro Atlanta. I’m just gonna to go
over and help with relief efforts, if you want to try and get me something to
take over and help people, I’ll be glad to schlep it over as I’m going over.”
And a few people donated some items to take over and I got those over to
the Red Cross and just dropped them off there at the door one afternoon. I
consider Tuscaloosa a second home.
Dan: Was there enough to help at that time, or was it just so overwhelming
in terms of devastation that they didn’t have enough?
Andy: There was no shortage of human labor. There was no shortage of
donated goods. I’m sure that they could have always used more, but it
wasn’t a situation where there were people just standing saying help us,
give us anything, there was a lot of resources heading toward Tuscaloosa,
as I recall, in the days and weeks after that.
Dan: Is there one thing about this that’s always going to be in the back of
your mind?
Andy: Yeah. So, you know, I’m an Alabama fan. I’m an Alabama alum. I
marched in the band and you know how we feel about Auburn. But, when-I want to say it was Gene Chizik who was the coach at the time, he brought
the football team over. Brought the entire football team to Tuscaloosa to
help with whatever it was that they could help with. Regardless of how you
feel about Auburn and Aubie and the rivalry and all that, when you see a
bunch of college kids put all that to the side, and they show up for a day to
help people dig out from all the damage that was done, that’s always stuck
with me. There’s all the talk about the heatedness of the rivalry, but, hell,
those kids and that football stuff, they put everything to the side and came
to town, and helped citizens and residents of Tuscaloosa dig out from that
horror, and that’s always stuck with me to this day.
Dan: Thank you so much, Andy. Some amazing stories, Jen, from people
who, they’re just never gonna forget this day.
Jen: No, and that is amazing from Portia with her news! Dan,
Meteorologist James Spann joins us now…you’ve likely seen him posting
at all hours of the day and night on Twitter, @spann, and he’s also on
Facebook. Or you may have watched his coverage on You Tube, or in
Alabama, but on April 27th, it would become a day that would alter his life,
and the lives of so many others.
What was running through your mind as you were coming to work that day?
James: We were so busy, I didn’t have time to really think about the
historical impact of the day or the potential historic impact. We were busy
and I’ll be honest with you, the morning round of storms, I didn’t expect it to
be that bad. Five people were killed, and a ¼ million people had no power.
That was almost like somebody punched us in the gut with their fist, and we
weren’t ready for it. We had tremendous infrastructure damage. We had a
little break in the middle of the day, and instead of really looking at weather
data and worrying about that, we were worried about getting cameras back
online, and re-establishing microwave paths. We were almost like Apollo
13 on the way to the moon. We had so much damage, and a lot of people
never knew that, and the engineers and some of the other people in this
building were just heroic to just get that stuff back online, because the first
tornado of the afternoon came through a town called Cullman, and that was
one of the cameras that went down that morning. If we don’t have a live
stream, a live video stream of a tornado, we know from social science
studies that people will not react as strongly, so having that back was very
important.
It was a day where I didn’t have time to get wrapped up in emotion or all of
that, I was just too busy. Just too busy.
Jen: Right. So, 62 tornadoes, correct? In the state of Alabama that day.
Is that what the statistics are?
James: Yes. 62 is the number. That’s a good number, and I know that is
correct. What we really don’t know, I think, and I don’t if we can ever
quantify this as the exact death toll. Because you kind of get into gray
areas when people lose their life 6 months, and then a year, after the event.
Was the death attributed to injuries in the tornado or not? The number that
we work really hard to achieve, we think the right number is 252.
Jen: Okay.
James: That’s the only number I care about. I know there will be a day to
celebrate the people that lived as a result of the weather enterprise. I know
that. But I’m still to the point where all I care about are these people that
died. These were precious people, that crossed every social economic
line. You had college students, infants, children, senior adults, high
income, low income, it didn’t matter. You learn who these people are, and it
will break your heart. And what we have to do in the weather enterprise is
to somehow find out what went wrong that day. The physical science
couldn’t have been better. The warnings were excellent for all 62
tornadoes. And I’ve said this before, and I stand by my statement, I think
the death toll that day should have been 30, which is in itself is a horrible
tragedy. 30 people heard the warning, they did the right thing. It was their
day. But for 222 of those people, they ought to be listening to this show
right now.
Jen: Right. In fact, that was my question, why do you think there was so
much loss of life that day?
James: We’ve learned a lot from social scientists, and I think that’s part of
our problem. My background is engineering and meteorology. I’ve never
taken a class in human behavior, or talking on TV, or social science. We
need those skills. We know a lot of things contributed to the death rate.
One is the siren mentality, the notion that people think they’re gonna hear
some magical air raid siren, which is basically World War I technology. I
don’t know why people are born with that here. I don’t understand it. But
you won’t hear that in your home, and in the midst of a raging storm,
especially at night, when people are asleep, so that was a problem.
We did a very poor job of reaching low income and Hispanic families. A lot
of Hispanics don’t understand what we were saying, and they couldn’t
understand the images on television. We have to do a better job with that.
A lot of the low income families, they can’t afford a $30 weather radio.
They can’t. That’s too much money, and we have to do a better job of
getting a modern device in their hands that’s properly programmed so it’s
not hard to use. They just turn it on and it works. And that was a problem.
And we also know, and this is hard, we have to turn the light on everybody.
And we have to look at those of us in the weather enterprise. The false
alarm ratio was too high. It was too high. At the time, in my market, I’m in
Birmingham, the weather service in Birmingham, the FAR was 80%.
Meaning 80% of the tornado warnings are issued, nothing happens. And
that leads, as you know, to the “cry wolf” syndrome.
Jen: Right.
James: And we heard this in verbatim all the time in the studies, “I hear
tornado warnings all the time, and nothing ever happens.” So, we’re to
blame for some of the deaths. There’s blame to go around for everybody
involved in this whole thing. I’ll say this, that the guys in Birmingham have
really worked hard, they’ve gone to basic science, and they have cut that
sucker in half. The false alarm ratio is well under 40% now, so there’re
good things that have come out of this, and that’s one of them. But at the
time, the “cry wolf” syndrome was a big problem.
Jen: I was listening to another interview with you, and I agree with you on
the tornado warnings, and being a broadcaster, and trying to get on the air
and tell people what’s happening, and what have you. Do you think we
need to use more severe thunderstorm warning with tornado tags to them
that say a tornado [is] possible type of a deal?
James: Right, here’s the problem. So, we can’t, I say we, I guess I should
say we, we’re all in this together, we can’t issue tornado warnings properly
for EF0 and EF1 tornadoes in most cases.
Jen: Right.
James: On occasion, you can, but it’s like playing whack-a-mole. By the
time you see, you get a report, or by the time you see a signature on radar,
whether its dual-pol or traditional velocity or whatever. By the time you see
the signature, the tornado’s already been down, and it’s gone. These
things last for 30 seconds or a minute. If you’re gonna warn for those
things, they you’re gonna have so many warnings that people won’t listen.
Warning after warning after warning, and that’s this false alarm problem. It
is total whack-a-mole.
Jen: Right.
James: We’re not that good. I agree, in those cases, you use a severe
thunderstorm warning, with the clear message that this storm is capable of
producing a tornado that might get down for a few minutes, and we’re not
able to warn you. And I think, in our business, we should be able to
communicate that very effectively. I’ve never read a call to action
statement on a weather service warning. I just don’t use them. I talk in the
James Spann language, but I think I can do a better job of communicating
that, so in answer to your question, yes, I think we should use more severe
thunderstorm warnings in cases where you might have a small spin up
tornado. We have to focus on the ones that are the big ones, you know,
the ones that do most of the death and the destruction, and, again, the
guys in Birmingham have done a very, very good job of that in recent years.
I can’t tell you how pleased we are in the broadcast community that they’ve
done such a great job of turning that around.
Jen: Right. That’s awesome. As you know, I was on the air on radio on
WRSA up in Huntsville that day, and there are parts of that day that are still
a blur. You know, you get in there, and it’s all about business and you’re
trying to help the communities and get the information out. But there are
times, I can actually see myself in the chair, on the air relaying the data,
and the radar, and there’s a few moments that will pop in my mind, and you
mentioned Cullman. That was one of the moments. I was reporting that
the courthouse had been hit, and that people were trapped, and that was
just such a hard thing to relay to everyone in the Huntsville area. And then,
at one point, the station was knocked off the air. But before that happened,
they had said to me, “Jen, we’re gonna leave you alone, and you’re gonna
run the station by yourself.” I was in Atlanta at the Weather Channel and
“we have to go to the basement”. So they had to evacuate, and go to a
safe spot, and I continued to broadcast until they got knocked off the air.
Do you have any moments when you think back, like this, that just kind of
stand out more than others during that day, or is it still all kind of a blur
together?
James: Well, you know, we do this a lot. This is a very aggressive severe
weather market, and standing out there, in front of that green wall for a long
time, it’s a common thing for us. Obviously, on a day where you’ve got 62
tornadoes, and most of them are EF3’s or higher, there is no book, there is
no manual on how to do that right.
Jen: Right.
James: You got multiple tornadoes down that are killing people, and if you
focus on one, what do you do? Do you double box it? How do you present
that? That’s something the social scientists can help us with later. I did the
best I could do, and Jason Simpson, who was in here with me, did the best
he could do under the circumstances. I look back on it. I know we could
have done better. Obviously, we need to improve greatly, with that high
loss of life. I think the hardest for me was probably the one that got the
attention.
And let me just say this, too, I think people that live in rural parts of this
country are discriminated against by weather people. They will be on TV.
If there’s a tornado in Birmingham, or Tuscaloosa, or Huntsville, or Atlanta,
but the minute it gets out of some of these cities, the TV stations go right
back to “Freak of the Week,” or whatever this garbage is on television and
they refuse--refuse to provide tornado warning coverage for rural counties.
So, what they’re telling people [is], if you live in the city, your life is
important, if you don’t, your life is not important. And that is absolutely
idiotic. And we’ve gotta stop that. It grinds my gears. I am very frustrated.
And we don’t do that here.
Again, on that day, we had a tornado in Cordova, AL, which is a small town,
at the same time Tuscaloosa was being hit. And I think I spent too much
time on Tuscaloosa, where I didn’t spend enough time on Cordova. And I
think about that a lot. We had loss of life in both, obviously. But the
Tuscaloosa thing was hard. I moved there when I started 5th grade, and it
was a time in my life where my father had abandoned me and my Mom,
and we were broke, and didn’t know anybody, and my Mom had to go back
to school, and life was kind of hard. There were some wonderful people
that loved us, and encouraged us, and helped us. So, I’ve got some
emotional attachment there. Having to watch all of that was horrible. I’ll
say this about that Tuscaloosa tornado, people focus on the minute the
tornado was coming through town. For the people that are listening to this,
that have an interest in doing weather, it doesn’t matter what we say then,
it’s too late. All that matters is what you said 30 minutes before that, and
45 minutes before that.
Two of the unsung heroes were John Oldshue and Ben Greer. These guys
had a dash cam of that thing in rural Greene County, which is way, way,
way before it got it up into Tuscaloosa, and that video helped us call a
tornado emergency, which I think you’ve got people walking around today
because of their work. For me, that was the hardest one was the, around 5
o’clock that afternoon.
Jen: Right. Is there anything else you’d like to add as we’re here at the 5
year anniversary?
James: Yeah--I really haven’t processed it in my mind. I think about it a
lot. I don’t know if I think about it every day. I will say this, the next time a
day like that happens, I’ll be at the cemetery. I’ve been doing this a long
time. I’ll probably work 8 or 10 more years. These tend to happen about
every 40 years, and one of the things I worry about, every time we have a
severe weather threat, people will ask the question, “Will this be like April
27, 2011?” And of course, the right answer is No, but I’ve stopped
answering that. I don’t even answer now, because the problem is, all it
takes is one. If there’s one tornado in the entire state wherever you live
and if that comes down your street, guess what? That’s your April 27. I
don’t want people to get hung up in this thing where it’s gotta be a day like
that, where it’s really dangerous. Every severe weather threat is
dangerous.
And one more thing I wanted to mention, too, that we’ve learned, and I
think we did a very poor job of this, is communicating the third part of the
readiness equation. The first part’s getting the warning and you know it’s a
weather radio and a Smartphone app. A good one, not a crap app, excuse
the expression, but a good one that’s designed to do that. And then know
where you’re going. And I think most people know that. Get out of a
mobile home. Site built house, small room, lowest floor, near the center,
away from windows. But the third part, I did a very poor job of
communicating this, having a kit of stuff. Helmets for everybody.
Everybody. I don’t care if you’re old. Helmets. Every life is precious.
Batting helmets. Bicycle helmets. And what’s so horrifying is that in a
situation like April 27, most people that lost their life, they were lofted. Most
people lost their life aloft due to shrapnel wounds to the skull region. And a
helmet would have prevented that loss of life and as you impact, as you
land, you might be 100 yards away, that also helps to prevent injury. So,
having a helmet on is a big deal. There’ s a marvelous peer reviewed bit of
research out of UAB in my market here that proves that that is the case.
And the other thing is having a whistle or an air horn. People bled to death
in open fields, April 27th. First responders couldn’t’ find them. You go into
these neighborhoods, you can’t even recognize it to start with, and then
some people are 100 yards away from where they started, and they’re
injured, they’re bleeding to death and they can’t vocalize. But if you had an
air horn, you can squeeze that sucker and the first responders have been
trained to listen for that. A lot of items you can’t have enough air to force
that through a whistle, but those little portable air horns--that’s a big deal.
And the other thing, we had a lot of this, people had severe injuries to their
feet. They started walking. When you’re in shock and you’re bleeding to
death, you just start walking. The people at DCH Regional Medical Center
in Tuscaloosa, they said people were walking there from Alberta City, they
looked like zombies. But their feet were shredded.
Jen: Wow.
James: They had on socks, or they were barefooted. And if you’ve ever
walked over a tornado debris field, you know, you can’t do that.
Jen: Right.
James: So having hard soled shoes is really a big deal because that will
save permanent injuries to your feet. Some people will never walk again
because of that, or they have to go to some radical means to get around.
Those are the things we’re gonna work on. It’s been quiet, and I’m very
thankful for that, over the last 5 years, but I do think often about those lives,
they’re lost. I’ve said this before, I recommend the book that Kim Cross
wrote, “What Stands in a Storm”. She vocalized that whole event very well.
It tells about those that lived. It tells about those that died. It tells about the
professional meteorologists. If you want to get a feel for that day, read her
book. It’s great.
Jen: James, thank you so much. I appreciate the time, and it is an honor.
I was not kidding when I said you’re my hero.
James: Oh, I’m just a schmuck down here in the trenches.
Jen: (Laugh). No way!
James: But, Jennifer, thank you. This is an honor to be on your show, and
good luck. I think it’s great. The fact that people can produce these
podcasts now and the ones about weather. I’ll be your first subscriber.
Jen: Yay!! Thank you, I appreciate it!
James: Okay. Have a great day.
Jen: You too!
(Sounder)
Dan: Jen, make a note of it. James Spann! Our first subscriber to
Tornado Talk!
Jen: I love it! Love it!
Dan: I think you did admit that you have a mild weather crush on him.
Jen: I will admit I do. I have a little crush on James Spann.
Dan: Now, he’s going to be following you everywhere you go.
Jen: (Laugh) I don’t know if he’s gonna have enough time, as much time
as he spends on Twitter and Facebook.
Dan: Oh, that’s true. That’s true. The saving grace.
Jen: (Laugh)
Dan: Jen, next episode, the anniversary of the Greensburg tornado. An
EF5 twister that destroyed 95% of the town. I was born and raised in Butler
County, that’s in South Central/Southeast Kansas. Whenever we would go
to Dodge City, we’d pass through Greensburg, and I remember the
infamous water tower that was there, the hand dug well. So much of that
destroyed. We talk to the person responsible for calling the shots that
saved a lot of lives that night from the National Weather service, Mike
Umscheid.
Jen: Also, we’d love to hear your tornado stories and we’ll share them on
“Tornado Talk”. Call us toll free at 800-439-1570. That’s 800-439-1570. Or
just email us at [email protected].
Dan: Do we really have a budget for an 800 line?
Jen: (Laugh)
Dan: We’ve done 1 episode. And nobody has a budget any more, and
somehow we are paying for all the incoming calls.
Jen: I’m not the boss.
Dan: We’d love it if you’d become part of our Team Tornado Talk. You can
find us on Facebook, and we will all stay in touch together, because we
want your ideas. We want your suggestions. We want your comments.
The feedback is important, because we’re building this together with you.
Jen, we’re gonna see you next time for episode 2!
(Sounder)