@jtsanders Maybe, Maybe not, but they can get a qualified ceo for a lot less than 500k a year.
Goodwill stores are the same way, overpaid head honchos.
Maybe
Do you think that the Red Cross can get a qualified CEO for $50,000 per year?
It also didn’t take long for the leeches to surface after the storm. There is a state statute forbidding price gouging for X number of days after a disaster like this.
The AG’s office announced several days ago they have an ongoing investigation into motels doubling rates, grocers charging 40 bucks for a case of bottled water, and so on.
not sure which is worse, the price gouging or the news reports that swarm in to interview children and their parents not 5 minutes after the disaster strikes
@bscar2, you’re right. The reporters turned out en masse and they’re still beating it to death even now. They’re all scraping and groveling for a victim or a spin.
Right after the tornado some high level network TV exec showed up and entered the neighborhood even though it had been cordoned off. He was told by the Moore Chief of Police to get out and he refused to leave along with making the statement, “Do you know who I am?”. They finally called in the National Guard commander to remove him. The Chief should have made the move and cuffed or sprayed him if that’s what it took.
What am I seeing? Okie got hit again on Friday night?? My gosh.
Well, luckily this all went south of me. The latest tornado formed west of my daughter right after she got off work and since getting out of town was comparatively easy for her she bailed out and spent the evening here north of OKC.
This one was actually several tornados in one and the main one was about a mile wide. At last reports there are least 2 and possibly 5 fatalities with dozens of injuries.
There’s massive flooding, power outages, and a lot of damage although at this point the storm is still going on there. Due to rain and darkness it’s impossible to determine the extent of damages.
The TV live shots show everything down there is pretty much a flooded mess.
I am one of the few people I know who survived a tornado. I live only by the Grace of God, He obviously wanted to torture me some more, heh, heh.
But, when I became a certified tornado spotter, I learned it was more likely the other end of a tornado, where the spout goes out, but with tornadic velocities of winds.
Note a car full of tornado chasers did die, so, yes, a car is not a safe place to be.
It would take tremendous courage to bail from a car and jump in the ditch. But, the evidence indicates that is your best chance of survival. With crawling up the sloping concrete of an underpass probably being the best of all.
The thing is high velocity winds do not act like low velocity winds. I once camped out with Boy Scouts with the Beaufort wind chart indicating 60 mph winds. I could light a match behind a tree with no gusts touching it. In low velocity winds, the match would have gone out instantly.
So, the bottom of a ditch may be perfectly still while a foot higher it might be 200 mph gusts. The catch is, it also may not be perfectly still…
The recommendation is based on the probability of survival, which is greater in a ditch with all the bad things that can happen, than almost sure death in the car.
During spotter’s class, we discussed it a lot, and many said they would still take their chances in the car.
But. then, I was trained by my son. Some years ago, He said, “Dad, I have something to show you. You gotta’ see this.”
We went to a main east/west rail line on which long coal trains, 50 to 100 coal cars, passed taking coal to big generators in Chicago.
We walked down to where the railway crossed a small ditch. Standing under the rail, our heads were up inside the rail way. You know, heavy timbers making the bridge across the ditch, with rails on top of them. So, our heads were actually up inside the rails.
We stood there while that long coal train passed over. And, I had to admit, that was indeed an awesome experience!!!
Of course, if something had gone wrong, we’d have been BUG SPLAT!. That knowledge was part of the experience.
I’d have to disagree with hiding under an overpass. The bridge acts as a venturi so the wind is actually greater going under the bridge. Not a safe place to be even though there is concrete over head.
I'd have to disagree with hiding under an overpass. The bridge acts as a venturi so the wind is actually greater going under the bridge. Not a safe place to be even though there is concrete over head.
Not living in Tornado country…I really don’t know if it’s a good idea or not…but there’s a famous video they showed on the weather channel some years ago and a family way up near the top of an overpass and the Tornado went right down the road over/through the overpass. The tornado didn’t look that big (F0 or F1).
During the dangerous tornados of a dozenish years ago several people took shelter beneath an underpass and were killed anyway. It’s better than being in the open but no guarantee of survival.
Latest count here is 10 dead and half a dozen still missing according to news on the radio. Apparently some people took shelter in a storm drain without thinking that torrential rains would cause flash flooding. It’s made even worse by the fact that some of the dead and missing are children.
Overpasses are BAD shelters, per NOAA:
"Many people mistakenly think that a highway overpass provides safety from a tornado.
In reality, an overpass may be one of the worst places to seek shelter from a tornado.
Seeking shelter under an overpass puts you at greater risk of being killed or seriously
injured by flying debris from the powerful tornadic winds.
The idea that overpasses offer safety probably began in 1991, when a television news crew and
some citizens rode out a very weak tornado under an overpass along the Kansas Turnpike. The
resulting video continues to be seen by millions, and appears to have fostered the idea that
overpasses are preferred sources of shelter, and should be sought out by those in the path of a
tornado. In addition, news magazine photographs of people huddled under an overpass with an
approaching tornado imply that this is the correct safety procedure. Nothing can be further
from the truth! "
More here: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ddc/?n=over
It’s true enough that an overpass may not even come close to saving someone’s life, but given the option of hunkering up underneath a beam or lying flat on the shoulder of the road the former is a better option.
The overpass where those people were killed some years ago in OK City was less than a mile from where I used to live.
The storm chasers are the ones who have been asking for trouble; as per the 3 killed the other day. It’s not just themselves they endanger; it’s many others around them.
I knew the “storm chasers” you refer to, Tim Samaris & his son Paul personally. I feel I must defend them a bit, since they can no longer do so.
Tim and his son were true scientists, not just thrill seekers out for a quick buck selling video to The Weather Channel. They collected and turned over much valuable data and measurements over the years, adding to the base of storm knowledge tremendously. Of all the storm trackers, Tim and Paul were probably two of the most conservative ones out there, and would never put others at risk if it could be at all avoided. In fact, the mission they were on wasn’t even related to tormados. They were participating in a study on lightning.
This storm was an extremely unusual one. It turned out to be an EF5, itself unusual, but it was also unusual is that instead of tracking along a path, it was changing directions and zigzagging, something a storm of this size usually doesn’t do. Tim, his son, and Carl Young were caught up in one of those change of directions.
I’m not saying there’s not a problem with too many people getting in the way. There is, but of all people, I will emphatically state that Tim and Pual WERE NOT part of the problem.
Based on what our local meteorologist said, who knew them well, I have to fully agree with @drrocket . Sounds like they were true scientists and just got surprised by the storm.
Another voice of agreement with @DrRocket . Samaras is the last person I’d have expected to be killed, even though his work required him to get right in front of tornadoes to deploy his sensor packs that were designed to be hit by them.
While it’s true that a lot of chasers are thrill-seekers who watch Twister or the Storm Chasers show and decide to get involved without bothering to learn what they’re doing, a lot of us are (were, in my case) either doing it for scientific research or work-related reasons. It is because of chasers like Samaras that the warning time for tornadoes has gone from “Hey, I see one coming and it’s 30 seconds away” to firing off the sirens sometimes 15 or more minutes before one forms. Their work has saved countless lives.
And BTW, also agreeing with the others who say under an overpass is a terrible place to be in a tornado. On one chase I drove through an area that had just been hit. There was a twisted, spikey ball of what looked like wrought iron slammed into the concrete under the bridge, right where people would run to if they followed that advice. When debris chunks the size of cars are flying around, you do not want to be above ground.
Another new report on that El Reno twister said that it had a ground speed of up to 150 mph at times, not many cars could outrun that. That could have been why these guys got caught by it.
Latest I saw on the Dallas news last night was that it was and EF5 with winds of up to 300 mph and 2 miles maximum ground width. They superimposed the track over Dallas, it would have covered all of downtown and then some. Thank goodness it didn’t hit El Reno directly.
@keith where did you read that? I’ve seen over 40mph groundspeed, which is an incredible speed for a tornado:
The tornadic winds themselves were measured by a DOW at 296mph.
Also bear in mind that the 2.6 mile wide tornado is only the tornado, not the very dangerous straightline winds surrounding it. The actual danger zone was larger than 2.6 miles.
Here’s a video mapping the location of all the (many) storm chasers relative to the tornado:
Vid of The Weather Channel chasers getting hit. They all walked away with non-life threatening injuries.