The network said though Betts was hurt, he and the car's two other occupants were wearing safety belts and were able to walk away from the banged-up vehicle. 'My car was actually lifted off the road and then set back down,' Ms Black said. I suggest that law makers in tornado alley states consider legislation making it a violation to intentionally drive into or near the path of known or likely tornados. Second, the point is still valid. They are pictured along with fellow storm chaser Tony Laubach, Avid explorer: Emotional tributes have been made to scientist and storm chaser Tim Samaras, who died doing what he loved, friends said, Destroyed: The Chevrolet Cobalt, pictured, driven by Tim Samaras was thrown half a mile in the terrifying storm, Tragic: Tim Samaras was found dead inside the car, pictured, while the other storm chasers' bodies were discovered half a mile in either direction. A finite resource. Public safety officials have the right and responsibility to restrict access to Main Street and areas nearby in order to save lives and property. Since I wrote this post, I've received many emails telling me that the premise is wrong, that traffic from too many storm chases did not contribute to the death of Samaras and others. The tornado then hurled the light Chevy Cobalt to the ground, leaving it looking as though it had been rammed through a trash compactor, police said. Paul is right. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. His pioneering work included the development of probes which when left in the path of a tornado, can measure pressure drops. #1. the storms path was extremely erratic and it made a sudden turn that surprised even veteran forecasters. It is emotional to posit "people died, let's make a law" without really identifying a true cause. Alliteratively, if you are in a car and hit by the vortex of an F3 or stronger tornado, your chances of survival are much lower. Invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a federal conspiracy law devised to ensnare mobsters, the suit accuses the organizations, as well as several green campaigners. Sometimes accidents happen. In Canadian County, Okla., where the men died, Undersheriff Chris West noted the three were hoping to help understand violent storms. Even with interstate highways out of town in six different directions, you wouldn't be able to evacuate all those people in a few hours. ', Danger: A series of violent storms and tornadoes have killed nine people as they swept through Oklahoma City and its suburbs on Friday, Damage: People survey the damage at the Canadian Valley Technology Center's El Reno Campus after it was hit by a powerful tornado on Friday, Crash: An airplane from the Aviation Technology department lies upside down on the lawn at Canadian Valley Technology Center in El Reno. The update from the National Weather Service means the Oklahoma City area has seen two of the extremely rare EF5 tornadoes in only 11 days. Samaras was killed along with his son Paul and storm chaser Carl Young in Friday's tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma. If you live there, there should be no excuseyour life depends on your knowledge. So, lets go back to the advice again. Samaras, 55, his son Paul, 24, and Young, 45, were all killed while trying to document and research the storm. Renowned researcher and storm chaser Tim Samaras, 55, his son Paul Samaras, 24, and his chase partner Carl Young, 45, passed away after they were overtaken by the multiple-vortex tornado,. Troopers requested a number of ambulances at I-40 near Yukon, west of Oklahoma City. They did not discuss the details but I would suspect you would want a helmet that comes down to the jaw line, which sort of eliminates a lot of bicycle helmets, although likely the bike helmet is better than a bare head. Tim Samaras, 55, along with his son, Paul Samaras, 24, and Carl Young, . Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic. The rest of the report deals with how we quantify El Reno, which surprisingly can be pretty subjective. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. Probably not. Northeast of St. Louis and across the Mississippi River, the city of Roxana was hit by an EF3 tornado, but National Weather Service meteorologist Jayson Gosselin said it wasn't clear whether the damage in both states came from the same EF3 twister or separate ones. At Will Rogers World Airport, 2,000 people spent the night sheltering in underground tunnels, reported News 9. Further with this ridiculous drive away strategy and the inability to predict small movements how do you parse the storm chasers from the poorly directed refugees? The Oklahoma State Department of Health reported on Saturday that Oklahoma City-area hospitals treated 104 people. Yes, Houston is a bigger city than OKC, and one of the freeway routes out of town takes you to Galveston, which is exactly the wrong way to go. Bolstering your argument by supposing the dead agree with you indicates how weak your initial argument is. Don't create a law just to feel better because people died. To me the real imperative is to get a tornado shelter in most homes and businesses and educate the general public about what to do and what not to do. But seriously, I'll be talking about the story of the current, In every area of life, but especially in the overlapping realms of technology, science, and health, misunderstanding how things work can be widespread, and that misunderstanding can lead to problems. Flash floods: Two pickup trucks are pictured stuck in high water along NW 23rd Street in El Reno. The men worked as a team and Tim Samaras had received 18 grants from the National Geographic Society for work in the field. 'He was either washed off the road or tried to get out of his car. Then, when the car is done flipping, it gets flipped again. I've heard horror stories about the attempt to partially evacuate Houston in advance of Hurricane Ike. His graduation was at Alameda International High School in 1976. Interestingly motorcycle helmets are cheaper than football helmets due to liability reasons. Here is what the tornado did: It grew from a big tornado to a bigger tornado, to what might be the largest tornado ever observed with instruments, in a matter of seconds, and it made a fast jog to the right, not an unusual thing for a tornado to do, but unanticipated by the storm chasers. I don't know what they were thinking in a state packed with cars and almost no other transportation options and few shelters. Three veteran storm chasers were among the 10 people killed, Dallas Area Storms Cause Power Transformer To Explode. People who tried to get away in their cars faced potential dangers from flash flood waters as well as tornado-force winds. They all unfortunately passed away but doing what they loved.'. Samaras' Chevy Cobalt was traveling east down a dirt road with the tornado to his south. It is fairly safe to say, that Mr. Samaras, his son, and Mr. Carl Young, sustained injuries when the sub-vortex of the El Reno storm directly impacted their vehicle on Reuters Road, west of the intersection with Radio Road. Why are you so quick to blame the TV and not the idiots living in the heart of tornado alley who chose to get in a car when they knew there were already tornadoes in the area? One thing that makes tornadoes so dangerous is the speed at which they hit. Yes, lets get the facts straight, which the comments below and the information added here help do. We are part of Science 2.0,a science education nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. I have stood up for professional storm chasers in this post. Pete, Born: I think this is a difficult question. I agree that telling people that the safest thing to do is to get in their car and drive is wrong. One thing in your favor: Tornadoes do not have politically powerful, wealthy backing, so it should be easy to enact laws regulating how people enjoy them :-), "I suggest that law makers in tornado alley states consider legislation making it a violation to intentionally drive into or near the path of known or likely tornados. In Missouri, areas west of St. Louis received significant damage from an EF3 tornado Friday night that packed estimated winds of 150 mph. Even if we could predict hours in advance that the storms would hit a particular county (and as you correctly point out, this is not true--there may be several distinct tornadoes in a single outbreak, so it's quite possible that Oklahoma City and Enid could both be hit the same day), this would not help in a major metro area like Oklahoma City. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The newscaster's advice was appalling. They were probably thinking, somebody should do something about this situation.". Of those who did I dont know how many of them were primed to use drive away as a strategy by earlier chatter in major media outlets, and elsewhere such as twitter and other social media. For example, it used to be hard to catch motorists running red lights in NYC. Just then the power went out and I heard what sounded like a freight train. The spot a few yards off Reuter Road where the body of Tim Samaras was found inside the crushed vehicle (his son. The breathtakingly fast subvortex -- the tornado within a tornado -- is visible to the south in footage captured by fellow chaser Dan Robinson's rear dashboard cameras as he fled several hundred yards ahead of Samaras. In the area of voting, the main problem seems to be the expenditure of great amounts of outrage and, which I've posted on before there are new developments, summarized at Inside Climate News: NBC News reported that the passengers were herded to the basement and told to put their hands on their heads as they waited out the storm. They look up that license plate in the DMV database and conveniently send the summons to you in the mail. What if we could clean them out? The rain was coming down horizontally in front of my car. Until I see good evidence to the contrary, I will be strongly against regulations on this activity. Say you are sitting in your home and you know there is a tornado coming and you are watching TV and the following breathless reporting is happening. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and open access. They were caught off guard not by traffic, but by an extremely powerful and erratic multi vortex tornado that grew from a mile wide multivortex into a 2.5 miles in diameter behemoth as it also accelerated and turned north toward the ill fated chasers. The officers had to contend with hail and strong winds as they worked to help motorists. Photographed with a wide angle lens, the mile-wide tornado, is seen near El Reno, Jack-knifed: Traffic slowly moves around a semi tractor-trailer that was blown off the highway by the tornado on Oklahoma Interstate-40, Stranded: Vehicles trapped by flash flooding sit underneath on the road in Oklahoma City after severe thunderstorms brought tornadoes, high winds, heavy rain and hail to the area. They were probably thinking, "somebody should do something about this situation.". Everybody was running for their lives,' said Terri Black, 51, a teacher's assistant in Moore. I have a feeling that Scienceblogs will not last long without me. Regarding emotional tragedy and responding to the thing that caused the emotional strategy, no, you've got that wrong. Officials in St. Charles County also reported that local schools suffered some damage. Oklahomans can handle a day or two of this, but after a week plus of watching families with lost loved ones on the news they start getting jumpy. Are they going to fire that weather reporter who told listeners to drive into the tornado? Unauthorized use is prohibited. Such a law or regulation could be more general, specifying that police have the authority to direct people generally in relation to emergency disaster zones that have not happened yet. These things will always be unpredicable and its good to hid under the basement steps! .". One might argue that if someone wants to drive their car into the path of a tornado they should be allowed to do so because it is a free country. Samaras, his son Paul, and colleague Carl Young died in late May in El Reno, Okla. while chasing an EF5 (winds above 200 miles per hour) tornado, which was later estimated to the be the widest . But a law or explicit regulation, or even a well publicized set of best practices in the interest of public safety, might make the point that needs to be made, thus discouraging people from making decisions that endanger others. Watch: The amateur storm chaser who was killed mentioned, in the cell phone conversation he was having with a friend (who was in a safe location and urged the storm chaser to get out of there), two local TV news vans passing him.
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