The April 27, 2011 tornadoes cut a wide path of destruction across Alabama, including Tuscaloosa. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
April in Alabama inevitably brings on thoughts of tornado season, and with very good reason.
Few Birmingham area residents can quickly forget the devastating April 27, 2011, tornadoes that killed 238 people in the state. And the National Weather Service in Birmingham is reminding people about another catastrophic storm period 40 years ago, April 3 and 4, 1974 — what is now known as a “super outbreak.”
“During the late afternoon and evening hours of April 3, 1974, at least eight tornadoes, including four extremely intense and long-lived storms, brought death and extreme storm destruction to Alabama,” as reported on the NWS Birmingham website. “Eighty-six persons were killed; 949 were injured, and damages exceeded $50 million. Sixteen counties in the northern part of the state were hit the hardest.”
According to John De Block, the warning coordination meteorologist for the NWS, April is the worst month for twisters in a state where tornadoes can happen 12 months out of the year. “April is the peak month for severe weather season for us,” he said. “There are a number of historic events that have occurred in the month of April and affected Alabama.”
But De Block noted that while March-May is the longest peak severe weather period, because Alabama weather goes back and forth between cooler and warmer temperatures both in spring and fall, there is a secondary peak for tornado season here. “We are subject to tornadoes every month of the year,” De Block said. “People don’t need to focus just on March, April and May, November-December, but be prepared at all times for potentially severe weather in Alabama.”
As noted on the NWS website, “Alabamians are reminded over and over again of the power and fury that nature can unleash. It’s important that people continue to improve their severe weather awareness and preparedness in order to reduce the toll exacted by these devastating storms.”
There are things the experts recommend that you do to get ready for tornado season, but an official with the Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency recommends that you don’t think small – that is, just in terms of windstorms.
“Are you prepared for a disaster — whatever it may be?” asked Michael Harter, the training and exercise officer for the Jeffco EMA.
Let’s start with tornadoes
“The first thing to be prepared is to know about your threat,” De Block said. “To understand what the threat is, to realize that April is the time, the peak of severe weather season, that means you’re going to need to be paying attention to what the weather forecast has in store. If you hear of thunderstorms in the forecast in April, you should really peak your ear up…
“Once you’re paying close attention, it’s important to have multiple ways of getting weather information,” he said. De Block recommended having a NOAA weather radio designed to come on and alert you even in the middle of the night in case of severe weather. “It’s the equivalent of a smoke alarm for weather. It’s a relatively inexpensive item, around $30,” he said.
“There are plenty of other ways to get weather information. There are apps. There are texting services, [with] most of the media outlets, you can subscribe to a notification service. We encourage people to have as many layers of weather information as possible.”
For many people, apps and weather radios are not as prominent or as popular a choice as relying on outdoor weather sirens, which some communities are phasing out, or not using. But it would not be a good idea to rely on those sirens in any case, De Block said. “Outdoor sirens are just that: they’re designed for people outdoors. They are not designed to wake you up in the middle of the night. So I really don’t encourage anyone to rely solely on an outdoor siren to notify them of impending severe weather. It’s important to have those other methods of getting notification.
“If you’re at the park, you’re in the middle of a ball game and for whatever reason, a warning is issued and…those sirens go off, that’s going to be your last line of defense really for your outdoor areas.”
Outdoor sirens are dependent on several factors that impact their effectiveness, De Block said: being in good repair, relying on someone to manual set the siren off and wind direction. “If the wind is blowing the wrong direction, you might not be able to hear the outdoor siren as well,” he said. On the other hand, the weather radio signal is reliable for 95 percent of Alabamians.
“That said, it [the weather radio] is technology that is subject to phone outages, power outages, just like any other form of technology. That’s why we recommend having multiple sources of information — to not just rely on one.”
What next?
After being aware of what the threat is, De Block said, “you have to know what to do once the threat manifests itself. … If you don’t have a designated FEMA-approved storm shelter, then you’re going to go to the lowest level of your building, center of the building, away from windows, with the most walls possible around you like a closet or a hallway, even bathrooms. … Some place where there’s more structure that will help protect you.”
De Block also pointed out that there are awareness campaigns underway about the advantages of wearing helmets to enhance safety during outbreaks of dangerous weather. “Strongly encourage anybody who might have a bike helmet to keep that bike helmet nearby, and football helmet for the kids or baseball helmet. Anything you can do to protect yourself, and especially your head, will be a great added measure of safety.”
Underscoring the importance of that advice, De Block noted that in the April 27 tornadoes, based on data from Jefferson County, “roughly 50 percent of the fatalities were related to head injuries.”
Every tornado season needs to be considered potentially the worst ever, De Block said. “Last year, we only had 23 tornadoes across the state of Alabama for the entire year,” as opposed, say, to 2011, when there were 145 tornadoes throughout the state. The average is about 40 per year.
The numbers of violent storms in the state since 2011 have been lower, but that doesn’t actually predict a trend, De Block noted. “You should not let your guard down. You need to be prepared, because it only takes one storm that hits your house to make it the worst severe weather season that you’ve experienced.”
Taking common sense precautions can present a disastrous situation from being the worst, he said. “Always be aware; be prepared. There’s no reason to be afraid. If you’re aware, and you’ve got the knowledge, then you act on the information and you take your steps, you should be as safe as you can be.”
The ways that people prepare for tornadoes has changed over the years in the wake of events with substantial loss of life, injuries and property damage, De Block noted. “There were a number of people who rode out those 2011 storms in those storm pits that probably Mama or Daddy, or Grandpa or Grandma, built back after the 1974 tornadoes. There have been a number of people who have installed storm shelters in their homes now since 2011, that one of these years down the road, they’re going to wind up saving somebody’s life.”
The EMA’s Mike Harter shows off the command post for emergency responders, equipped for the next disaster in the county. Photo by Nick Patterson.
Preparing for disasters — the EMA focus
The National Weather Service is connected by radio and other means to the Jefferson County EMA — the agencies work together to helping local officials get prepared to deal with severe weather, said Harter.
“If they suspect an event to happen, they would brief us, saying, ‘This is what we know so far as to the event that is going to take place.’ Then we would go in and send out a message…to different players — police chiefs, fire chiefs, mayors, commissioners — that we have a potential for severe weather,” Harter said.
The EMA uses WARN, the Wide Area Rapid Notification system. “It allows us to send text messages, TTYs, just emails, to either home or work or phone, or whatever we wanted to. It’s a very quick way of getting information out to those that need to be aware.”
Those first contacts allow leadership to make sure their first responders and staff members are prepared for whatever is coming, Harter said. “They should also be taking a look at: [Are] my employees ready? Can they stay away from work or from home x number of days if a disaster strikes? They’ve got to make sure that the employees basically have a preparedness plan also in case they’re away from work.”
Depending on when and where the disaster strikes and what it does, employees may be stranded either at work or at home, he said. Harter was stranded at his home in Clay for a period during the snowstorms in January, for example.
Another aspect of the county getting ready involves making certain that the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) (which, like Harter’s office, is in the basement of a building next door to Birmingham City Hall) is prepared for the influx of representatives from various agencies which work together to mitigate a disaster.
The main room in the EOC is laid out like a command center, with long desks equipped with computers, phones and radios, as well as projectors for presenting situation-based graphics for the response team to see and flat-screen monitors for public information officers to keep up with news coverage of events as they unfold, among other things. An adjacent room houses a communications hub for quickly routing telephone calls to the appropriate member of the team, and even a setup for ham radio operators who might come into play given the right circumstances.
When a disaster strikes, representatives of agencies from the Birmingham Police and Fire Departments, to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, the EMA, public works from the county and the city, and suburban police and fire units, come together as a team to deal with the event. Once they enter the EOC, they play different roles, but the teamwork required to deal with a catastrophe demands that everyone check their jurisdictional affiliations at the door, Harter said. “When they come in, they are not known as Jefferson County or Birmingham. They are the EOC law enforcement branch.”
The folks in the EOC make sure that all of the departments across the county are prepared to support the joint effort, Harter said. For instance, during the snowstorms in January, units from Hoover and Bessemer went to the far eastern end of the county to help rescue people as needed.
Preparing the officials is just part of the task, however. In most disasters, the first responder on the scene is you.
For any disaster that might happen, “citizens need to be prepared,” Harter said, including personal disasters. “If I had a fire in my home, it would be disastrous to me but maybe not to the community. Now, what do I do? How do I pick up the pieces from this?”
Taking the all hazard approach
All disasters break down into four basic phases, Harter said: impact, inventory, response and recovery, and his job is to teach people how to deal with all four.
“Part of our stuff is to make people aware of preparedness in all disasters, not just tornadoes,” he said. “FEMA went to an all-hazard approach several years ago. … That’s what we try to do, make people aware of potential hazards and having a plan for that.”
Harter visits groups of people regularly to talk about preparing for possible disasters; at the time of this interview, he was planning for a visit and presentation at Center Point City Hall to the Neighborhood Watch program. The following day, he would be talking at St. Vincent’s East to “people who are disabled with vision issues.” In all cases, Harter is “trying to get the information out about being prepared and how [to] get information in a disaster.”
He quickly rattles off a list of the kinds of considerations people need to make in case of a disaster. “Having a plan, having a kit. If you were told to evacuate, what would you take? Do you need any medications? Are you on a special diet? Do you have kids? What are the ages of the kids? … Do you have enough diapers? Do you have enough baby food, formula? Do you have whatever the essential is? If you’re disabled, do you have a friend next door who can help you in a disaster to move from Point A to Point B? There are just so many different things that come into play.”
He offers tips to schools, businesses — 40 percent of small businesses don’t recover from catastrophic events — and even to volunteer disaster workers. In every case, though, Harter or other EMA speakers visit only by invitation. “We don’t go out there and volunteer. They call us and say, ‘We need to have an assessment,’” he said.
Because of that, not every school has had a visit. Harter clearly believes that having an assessment of various disaster scenarios would be a good thing for any school to do, because most school plans he has seen only take limited possibilities into consideration when preparing for potential disasters.
The EMA provides access to a wide range of printed materials to help prepare: brochures from FEMA, generally free of charge, dealing with everything from an emergency supply list to what steps to take to gear up for any disaster; pamphlets from Homeland Security designed to help businesses get ready for anything from a terrorist attack to tornadoes, fires, or floods, and to get citizens involved in Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT); and an emergency preparedness guide for the government’s Citizen Corps, of which CERT is a part.
And the Jefferson County EMA website contains additional information tailored for the local area. Harter and the other seven people at the agency are happy to offer training and advice to anyone in the county to deal with any possible disaster.
“The service is available to everybody,” Harter said. “All they’ve got to do is call.”
The Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency is located at 709 North 19th Street, in Birmingham. You can reach them by phone at (205) 254-2039.