Damage in a Louisiana home from the August, 2016 flood. Operation Blessing photo
You might not have thought much lately about the disastrous flooding that hit Louisiana August 12-14. You might have assumed that now, three weeks later, the communities there have recovery pretty much in hand. You’d be wrong.
Operation Blessing photo
Today, Christian relief organization Operation Blessing put out a new plea for volunteer assistance in Louisiana. As you’ll read, the organization is even prepared to provide lodging for volunteers who travel from outside the area.
Please share this information with anyone you know who might be able to help.
Dear OB Volunteer:
More than 1,500 volunteers have already joined the effort to help and restore hope following the catastrophic floods in Louisiana this past month. With an army of faithful volunteers we have served over 13,500 meals, sent 5 semi-truckloads of emergency relief supplies, and have helped numerous homeowners clear away the flooded debris from their homes – giving them hope to start the rebuilding process. But there is still much more to do!
Volunteers are urgently needed to help sort through and salvage belongings, clear away flooded debris, and mud-out and gut homes – tearing out soggy sheetrock and flooring – so families can start the rebuilding process. Operation Blessing invites you to recruit a team and help restore hope to those who have lost so much.
Operation Blessing is sending volunteers out Monday – Saturday now through September 30. Volunteers who are local to the area (and do NOT need volunteer housing), can go directly to Volunteer Check-In each day at 8:30 AM or Noon. (Please arrive 15 minutes early to complete your volunteer registration.) Volunteers should wear long pants and hard-sole shoes. Operation Blessing will provide tools, safety equipment, a safety briefing, t-shirt, and lunch.
Volunteer Check-In
Monday- Saturday at 8:30 AM
Healing Place Church (Denham Springs Campus)
569 Florida Avenue SW
Denham Springs, LA 70726
Volunteer Housing: For volunteers traveling from outside the area, Volunteer Housing is available. You can request housing by sending an email to volunteer@ob.org. Please include your name, telephone number, the number of team members, and the dates you would like to serve. You can also call 757-226-3407 to reserve housing. Reservations must be made 48 hours prior to your requested arrival time. Operation Blessing will provide your lodging, meals, tools, and make work assignments. All we ask volunteers to provide is their own transportation to/from the work site each day.
Please note: all volunteers must be at least 18 years old and serve in teams of at least two people.
Thank you for your support and heart to serve those in need. If you have any questions or would like more information, please call 757-226-3407 or email volunteer@ob.org.
God Bless,
Kerry
Kerry L. Dodson National Volunteer & U.S. Programs Manager
U.S. Disaster Relief Operation Blessing International
977 centerville turnpike | virginia beach, va 23463
office: (757) 226-3407|fax: (757) 277-0231 | web: www.ob.org
For some time, I’ve looked at amateur storm chasers with some disdain. I believed that too many were putting themselves into too much danger, just to see, photograph and/or video record tornados. I doubted that many chasers were truly motivated by improving public safety and even fewer were doing real science, no matter what they said. I was concerned that many chasers set poor examples for the general public and that their “antics” encouraged lesser informed people to take uneducated and unwise risks.
I’ve been a SKYWARN storm spotter for more than a quarter century. When talking to friends, family members and even journalists about my volunteer service to the National Weather Service (NWS), I was careful to make sure they understood that I’m not a chaser, like the people they’ve seen on TV or on the Web. My ultimate goal, I’d explain, isn’t to see tornadoes, it’s to help protect my community from possible storms by staying close to home and relaying valuable information to the NWS.
So it was with some trepidation that I attended an event in November, 2015 called INChaserCon, a one-day convention in the Indianapolis area for storm chasers. I’m glad I went. Some of the people I met there subsequently changed my thinking. They are admittedly driven by a desire to see tornadoes. But my subsequent experience with them demonstrated that they’re also very passionate about getting reports to the NWS.
After the chasers learned that I have access to NWSChat – a private, internet-based text chatroom run by the NWS – they invited me to join them on Zello, a smartphone app with which they communicate with each other—so I could relay their reports to the NWS via NWSChat.
That’s exactly what happened during the August, 2016 tornado outbreak in Indiana and Ohio. As a tornadic storm moved east from Kokomo into the county warning area of my local NWS office, storm chasers John Tinney, Eric Lawson and David Buell reported wall clouds, funnel clouds, etc. via Zello. I relayed those reports via NWSChat.
Then, a storm over my own home in Fort Wayne, Indiana received a tornado warning. Storm chaser Michael Enfield immediately headed toward that storm. Via Zello, he promptly reported a wall cloud, then funnel clouds and then a tornado for me to relay via NWSChat. The NWS survey report recorded the time of the tornado’s initial touchdown as 5:27 p.m. – the same time as Enfield’s report, confirming that he saw and reported the tornado when it first touched down. That storm eventually did EF-3 damage to a rural part of Allen County, Indiana.
Throughout the event, any time the chasers had something to report, if I wasn’t immediately available on Zello, they’d keep trying until I acknowledged their reports. Getting reports through to the NWS was clearly very important to them. By the end of the event, I had typed 50 reports into NWSchat. All but about 15 of those came from storm chasers on Zello. The rest came from storm spotters via ham radio.
By aggressively chasing storms, my new friends put themselves in positions to immediately report weather that was not near any traditional SKYWARN spotters at the time. By religiously reporting, they played significant roles in protecting people in the paths of the storms.
A Facebook post by Lawson sums up pretty well how this particular group of storm chasers sees things:
“I noticed a developing supercell heading towards Kokomo was looking really strong and rushed out the door. By the time I was on interstate 69 southbound the strong EF3 was already in progress and heading towards the town in which I have spent many days of my youth, and is home to many great friends and their families. Hearing reports of the devastation in progress on the radio made my heart sink. I was rushing south in horror wondering if anyone I knew had been hurt. This is the moment that things really changed for me, I felt less excited about seeing tornadoes, and much more concerned with providing accurate information to keep people informed.”
I have no doubt there are other storm chasers out there who rarely report their observations to the NWS. There are likely some that don’t care about anything but the excitement of seeing a tornado.
But I’m convinced that the storm chasers I know are not among these. They’ve changed my attitude about chasers.
Tornado damage in northeastern Allen County Indiana. NWS photo.
When the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for northeastern Allen County, Indiana at 5:14 p.m. Aug. 24, 2016, more people in the county got their initial alerts from mobile phones than any other information source, according to an informal, online survey conducted by the publisher of this blog.
Of people who indicated they were anywhere in Allen County at the time of the warning, slightly more than 32 percent said they first learned of the warning via their mobile phones (including “Wireless Emergency Alerts,” alerts from apps, text messages, social media, etc.). Television was the second-most-frequently cited initial warning source, at nearly 21 percent. Outdoor warning sirens, commonly referred to as “tornado sirens,” came in third, at 17 percent. Just under eight percent of respondents credited NOAA Weather Radio as their initial warning source.
Methods by which respondents indicated they first learned of the tornado warning. With this and all images in this blog, clicking the image will display a larger, clearer version.
The warned storm created a tornado in northeastern Allen County at approximately 5:27, according to a report from the northern Indiana weather forecast office of the National Weather Service. That was about 13 minutes after the NWS issued the warning. The tornado stayed on the ground until approximately 5:39, cutting a five-and-a-quarter-mile path to the northeast and doing damage consistent with the EF-3 rating on the enhanced Fujita scale.
Warned immediately
Nearly 62 percent of the survey’s 167 respondents indicated that they received the warning “immediately.” Another 19 percent said they received the warning with 10 minutes of its issuance, which would still have been a few minutes before the tornado touched down. Nearly 20 percent of respondents did not learn of the warning any sooner than 30 minutes after the NWS issued it, well after the tornado had lifted.
Above: how soon people reported learning of the tornado warning.The red, five-sided polygon encloses the part of Allen County to which the tornado warning applied. The dark yellow line within the polygon depicts the tornado’s path.
The NWS drew a five-sided polygon that enclosed 144 square miles to indicate the portion of northeastern Allen County to which the tornado warning applied. As a whole, Allen County encompasses approximately 660 square miles, so the warning polygon included less than a fourth of the county’s total area. The tornado’s entire path remained within the warning polygon, so people outside the polygon were not in danger.
Nearly half of all respondents indicated that they knew immediately whether they were within the warning polygon. Another quarter of respondents knew within five minutes whether they were in the warned part of the county. Nearly 18 percent, however, never knew with certainty before the storm passed whether they were in danger.
How soon respondents knew if they were in the warned area.
Best sources for location information
Among respondents who knew immediately whether they were within the warned area, nearly a third received their initial warning via their mobile phones, 24 percent via TV, 11 percent via NOAA Weather Radio and eight percent each via broadcast radio, amateur “ham” radio or outdoor warning sirens.
Among those who never knew with certainty before the storm passed whether they were in the danger area, there was a tie for the top response on how they first learned of the warning; 26 percent each reported TV and outdoor warning siren. A fifth received initial word of the warning from someone they know and 17 percent received it via their mobile phones.
Performance of outdoor warning sirens
Locations of outdoor warning sirens in Allen County, Indiana, from map provided by the website of the Allen County Office of Homeland Security. Yellow symbols indicate intermittently operating sirens. Red indicates a siren known to be inoperative.
Every operating outdoor warning siren in Allen County, including sirens miles southwest of the warning polygon, sounded shortly after the NWS issued the tornado warning.
Slightly more than 59 percent of respondents reported hearing an outdoor warning siren sometime during the hour of the warning, even if it wasn’t their initial warning source. Nearly 41 percent of respondents never heard an outdoor warning siren. The survey did not ask respondents whether they were outdoors at the time of the warning.
Respondents whose initial warning came from outdoor warning sirens were nearly evenly split with regard to their awareness of whether they were actually in the warned area. Slightly more than 24 percent reported knowing immediately, nearly 28 percent reported knowing within five minutes, nearly 21 percent said they knew within 10 minutes and nearly 28 percent indicated that they never knew with certainty before the storm passed whether they were in the warned area.
How soon respondents whose first waning came from an outdoor warning siren knew whether they were in the warned area.
Of respondents who got their first notifications of the warning from outdoor warning sirens, more than three fourths were within the city limits of Fort Wayne at the time. Seven percent were in the city of New Haven and no more than four percent reported being in any other location within Allen County. The vast majority of the county’s outdoor warning sirens are located within Fort Wayne and New Haven. Approximately 71 percent of Allen County’s population resides in Fort Wayne and probably even more are employed in Fort Wayne.
People close to the warning
Only seven percent of respondents reported that at the time of the warning, they were in the city of Woodburn, the town of Leo-Cedarville or rural northeastern Allen County (in other words, in or near the warning polygon) at the time of the warning. Of those, the initial warning source was more evenly divided, with 25 percent each reporting mobile phone or television and nearly 17 percent each reporting NOAA Weather Radio, outdoor warning siren or amateur “ham” radio.
Only a third of these respondents reported ever hearing an outdoor warning siren, even if it wasn’t their initial warning source. Eight percent never knew with certainty before the storm passed whether they were in the warned area.
Conclusions
Readers should use caution drawing conclusions from these data, because the survey that generated them was informal, not scientific, and the number of respondents fell far short of the number required for a representative sample of people who were in Allen County at the time of the warning.
In terms of improving the tornado warning system, it would appear that steps to increase awareness of warned locations could be helpful. Outdoor warning sirens, of course, do not provide location information. For that reason, it’s surprising that some respondents who reported initially receiving the warning via outdoor warning sirens also reported knowing immediately whether they were in the warned area. Because Allen County activates all of its sirens for every warning, citizens cannot assume that their ability to hear a siren indicates that they are near the warning polygon, but it’s possible that some people do not realize this and that additional public education might be helpful.
Readers might be surprised that a number of respondents who initially received the warning via television were not immediately aware of whether they were in the warned area. If we assume the TV meteorologists who were on the air live at the time described the warned area, it is possible that those respondents initially learned of the warning not from live meteorologists, but from on-screen textual information.
Finally, it appears that a significant portion of people initially learned of the warning via their mobile phones. The time of day might have skewed those results, because many people were likely commuting at the time, and therefore away from TVs and weather radios. Also, commuters would have been more likely to hear outdoor warning sirens than would be people inside workplaces or homes. Still, it’s possible that the Wireless Emergency Alert system that’s enabled by default on all modern smartphones proved itself to be a valuable source of warning information.
