Quote:
Originally posted by DeltAlum
Heard on the radio this morning that the same kind of weather pattern that happened yesterday will probably happen again today.
|
And, sure enough, they were right -- more storms in OKC area last night. Again, son was not affected in Norman. In fact, he moved his stuff from the dorm to next year's apartment last night.
JAM, going to pick him up next weekend -- he's spending the week with his next year apartmentmate and her parents near Dallas this week.
I want to share some recollections of a tornado from a few years ago. The memories are vivid, even though I wasn't close to the storm when it happened. Perhaps it will give some of you who haven't experienced this some feeling of what it is like.
Those of you who aren't interested in a narrative, please feel free to skip this.
One afternoon a collegue and I from the TV station I worked for at the time were returning to Denver from Colorado Springs and noticed some HUGE thunderheads out over the Eastern Plains. We called the newsroom -- and they pretty much ignored the information.
Later that evening, I was leaving a committee meeting and heard on the radio that a "tornado has flattened the town of Limon," which is about 90 minutes East of Denver on I-70. I immediately headed for the station -- not realizing I wouldn't be back for three days.
At the station, the chief engineer and I started putting equipment we thought might come in handy into a station truck, as well as sending someone to a local grocery store for box lunch type of food and pop/soda. By that time, of course, several crews and reporters, along with our satellite uplink truck had already been sent.
We arrived in Limon at about 3:30 AM to find that the only communications in and out were the satellite telephones in our uplink truck and the truck from the ABC affilliate in town. We were sharing them with the State Patrol because their communications towers had been destroyed, as well as the telephone company's. In fact, we were parked on a main street next to the phone company tower which was leaning to the north by several degrees.
The first order of business was live shots for the news program prior to the TODAY Show and within TODAY. The network had been getting a little testy with our crews who were trying to gather news for our shows as well as assisting the State Patrol. (We were owned by NBC at that time) Fortunately, I knew the TODAY Show director pretty well, and was able to calm things down some by being the interface between the station and network.
Of course, when we arrived, it was absolutely pitch black. Those of us who have lived in cities and towns most of our lives don't realize how dark it can be on a storm night with no moon or stars and no electricity at all. Again, the only power in town was our trucks generators and a few other generators around town.
And it was amazingly quiet. No sound at all.
Of course we could see the destruction close to where we set up our operation, but it wasn't until the sun started to come up that we realized how bad the damage really was. On the street where we parked, there were some cars completely crushed by building that fell on them. Those were the backgrounds for those first live shots. Then we discovered we were immediately in front of a restaruant/bar where a number of people had taken shelter in a walk-in freezer when the storm hit. The storm had cut a huge path of total destruction from West to East through the center of town. The buildings, mostly frame, but some brick were simply piles of rubble.
I was terribly paranoid for our crew and myself about downed power lines, until it occurred to me that there was no power coming into the town anyway. Remember, it was so dark that there was no way to see where you were walking without a bettery light of some sort. What was probably more dangerous, in actuality, was loose rubble and boards with big nails, splinters, etc. sticking out and up in every direction.
Just after first light, our station helicopter showed up to shoot aerials and start ferrying people, videotape and other things back and forth. Those were the first pictures to really show the scope of the damage.
As the day wore on, we discovered the other thing we didn't think to bring. Ice. Since there was no power, there was no ice. Fortunately, we chould get bottled water. We had to have more food brought in since all of the local stores were damaged or closed.
All day we fed video and live shots to our station, NBC and other TV stations across the nation. As day turned to night, we began planning for a special following our late (10:00 PM in this time zone) news, so I went out scouting for camera/standup locations. One of them was that restaurant and walk-in freezer. The other was a destroyed gas station about a block away. Since all of the other people from the station were photographers and reporters (and one field producer), the chief engineer and I ran audio, video and power cables to the two locations. We won an EMMY (my sixth) for that special which was called, "Terror on the Plains."
While Limon is a crossroads on Interstate 70, all of the truck stops and service stations were closed. We were busy with our coverage, and the NBC Affilliate Service Operations Manager in Charlotte, who was a former employee of our station somehow found a tanker truck to bring in diesel fuel for out satellite truck which was running non-stop. We had no way of finding or reaching fuel under the circumstances.
We were there the rest of that night all the next day, that night and finally came back to Denver early the following morning.
It turned out that while there were numerous injuries, amazingly there were no fatalities. The tornado was an F5, which as I understand is the biggest and worst. At that time, the weather radar for the Denver area was a Limon, and the National Weather Service Meteorologists there got amazing pictures and video tape of the event. On one of the tapes, you can hear one of them saying, "Come on, Limon, get the word out," just before the sirens started.
I grew up in Ohio where we had a fair number of tornados, but I had never been close to the aftermath of one this big. Those pictures are etched into my memory, and I must admit that I look at tornado warning with a whole new meaning and take them a lot more seriously.
Now, with a son living in "Tornado Alley," I watch the coverage very closely.
Thankfully, he and the people in his close proximity have been fortunate the past two nights and not really affected at all. But, those three days at Limon have given me a real understanding of what the aftermath of this kind of event can be.
I wish all of you close by the best of luck.
Isht!!
They heard on the radio/TV where it touched down, which was maybe 1/2 mile from their neighborhood. Luckily it missed their neighborhood, but that was the second close call (same thing happened in 1999--it was about 1/2 mile from their apartment).
Linear Mode
