. Hundreds killed, entire communities flattened, city blocks reduced to splinters and deadly destruction across a half-dozen states. Nature's fury, delivered in a few violent moments.
By Amanda Sowards, Montgomery Advertiser, via AP
Daniel Hinton looks through the remains of his house Thursday, after a tornado ripped through Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Wednesday.
By Amanda Sowards, Montgomery Advertiser, via AP
Daniel Hinton looks through the remains of his house Thursday, after a tornado ripped through Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Wednesday.
How can it still be possible?
In an age of instant personal communication, dazzling Doppler radar imagery and sophisticated computing, forecasters in the 21st century have the means to provide urgent and timely life-saving warnings to millions when killer storms advance.
However, experts, emergency responders and survivors say that Wednesday night's devastating weather brings home a glaring truth to veterans of America's tornado belts of the South and Midwest: When a monster twister strikes, there is little one can do but try to survive. And even with the best of preparations, some won't.
Experts will be examining the aftermath for a long time, seeking lessons that may make future storms more survivable, from building codes and advanced detection and warning systems to old-fashioned tornado sirens.
In the immediate aftermath, however, there is a basic acknowledgment of nature's power.
Wednesday?s tornado outbreak was among the deadliest in U.S. history:
*Note: April 27, 2011 data as of 6:30 p.m. Thursday
Source: Harold Brooks, National Severe Storms Laboratory
"These were extremely violent tornadoes," says Jim Stefkovich, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Birmingham. "Unless you are underground, deaths and injuries occur with these storms."
"If a storm of this magnitude takes a direct hit on homes, people are going to perish," says Kevin Simmons, an economics professor at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, who studies the effects of tornadoes.
The tornado outbreak was savage, in numbers and intensity.
At least 297 people were killed, with deaths in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky. More than 200 died in Alabama alone. It was the sixth-deadliest occurrence of tornadoes in U.S. history, according to research meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.
Severe weather specialists said there appeared to be ample and effective warnings, available from TV to Twitter. Many people needed no more warning than a look out a window at the terrible specter of a gray funnel cloud growing larger on the horizon.
"I don't think this is a case where there was no warning," Simmons says. "This was just a horribly tragic event where a massive tornado went through a populated area."
"They didn't have time," says Weather Channel lead meteorologist Tom Moore. "There were so many tornadoes, and they moved so fast, at 60-70 mph."
Many of the deaths came from massive, unsurvivable trauma. Loring Rue, chief of trauma surgery at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital, said victims and patients he saw had injuries consistent with high-speed motor vehicle accidents, particularly involving bone, head and chest. It was as if, he said, they were in the comfort of their homes in one minute, and flung violently by wind and debris in the next.
"The injuries were remarkable," he said with a physician's understatement.
The storms were forecast "so perfectly," said Bill Gallus, professor of meteorology at Iowa State University, that future research into Wednesday's storms will focus on factors that led to so many deaths despite advanced knowledge.
"Were people ignoring the warnings, or did they not hear them?"he asks. "Or did they do what they were supposed to, and the tornadoes were so intense they didn't have a chance of survival?"
But already, he said, it is clear that just as in the devastation that the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami brought to Japan recently, Mother Nature has the power to overcome all the technological tools that modern society assumes will protect it.
"We know that with extremely violent tornadoes, a lot of the safety tips that people are told are giving you as good a chance as you can have to survive,"Gallus says. "But you still may not."
On average, tornado warnings in Alabama preceded storms by 23 minutes, Stefkovich said. And, he notes, forecasts well before then advised of the likelihood of severe weather.
"Many lives were saved because of the tornado warnings," says Stefkovich. "The word was out well in advance in the forecast."
Studies of over a century's weather patterns indicate that the areas struck this week are historically the most dangerous in the nation for tornadoes, says Walker Ashley, professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University.
"The heart of where most people die" in tornadoes is the mid-South and Deep South, he said.
Among the reasons:
•Tornadoes happen frequently.
•Mobile homes are common and often placed in dense clusters.
•Many homes lack basements, frequently the safest residential shelter possible.
•Forests and rolling terrain can obscure the horizon and make it harder to see a twister's approach.
•Prevalence of older homes built on cinder blocks, which can increase vulnerability.
Timing and human nature can be factors as well, Ashley says. Twisters that strike in the dead of night, when people are in their homes sleeping, frequently are the deadliest.
"In general, those that occur after midnight are 2.5 times more likely to kill than daytime tornadoes," he said.
Complacency is a danger.
"'It hasn't happened to me before, so I don't have to worry about it,'" can be a deadly assumption, Ashley says. "People need to take personal responsibility for their lives. The best way is to get a weather radio."
In Hendersonville, Tenn., alderman Matt Stamper said warning sirens were missing in his city of 51,000 because the city cut off funding for the sirens it once had. Sirens can cost $15,000 or more each, he said, and the city will have to find the money.
"I'll be beating the drum until we get them," Stamper said.
"It's not the only solution, but it's a good one."
And even those preparations may not be enough if The Big One strikes.
"Everything that was humanly possible was done," says Moore, of the Weather Channel. "The warnings that were issued were right on."
Alabama Public Safety Lt. George Thorpe says tornado warnings were sounded and local TV news reported the looming threats.
But some people may have missed the messsages, he says, and others may have ignored them.
"There probably were some that say, 'We get storms like this come along and we're fine,' " Thorpe says.
"Some people probably didn't want to be inconvenienced to go to a shelter."
Sirens are located in most populated areas, he said, but storms that preceded the twisters knocked out power, taking some radio stations off the air.
There is no reverse-911 phone messaging system in the area, he says.
Homes that survived previous severe storms were taken out this time, Thorpe says.
"One of the troopers from this area found a wood structure that survived some strong past storms, and only one room of the house was left," he says. "An older lady who lived there did not survive."
Contributing: Oren Dorell, Doyle Rice and Steve Marshall
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