Radios best bet against twisters

Sirens and cell phones aren't fast enough when a tornado races at 50 mph. NOAA radios allow more time

ELM CITY -- As relief workers helped pick through the debris of last weekend's killer tornado in Johnston and Wilson counties, government officials were quick to admit there is little they can do to get people out of the way of a storm traveling at the speed of a freight train in the dark.

Gov. Mike Easley, after flying over the damaged areas, said residents should take responsibility for their own safety. That means, he and others said, doing the one thing that can save them from wind forceful enough to shatter houses and toss farm machinery end over end: Buy a $30 NOAA weather radio and plug it in.

"It is the most effective way of getting notification," said Gordon Deno, emergency management director for Wilson County, where the wind blew 130 mph and killed an 11-year-old boy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses a nationwide network of 24-hour radio stations broadcasting weather data directly from the nearest National Weather Service office.

When an emergency warning is issued, the radio sounds a loud alarm, followed by a voice recording or electronic read-out saying where a storm has been detected, which way it's moving and how fast, and instructing those in its path to take cover. The radios come with strobe lights for the deaf and heard of hearing.

The first radio alert of a tornado in the area of Elm City in Wilson County came at 3:18 a.m., Deno said. The first call reporting structural damage came at 3:32 a.m.

"That's about 10 minutes that people would have to get ready," Deno said.

Other warning systems don't always allow that much time.

When a tornado was spotted west of the Rockingham County town of Stoneville on March 28, 1998, county emergency dispatchers activated a siren atop Stoneville's water tower. Unlike the shorter blasts used to summon firefighters, the weather emergency blasts lasted a minute each, said Fire Chief Steve Evans.

The siren was activated about three minutes before the twister hit. Three townspeople died. Residents with weather radios might have heard that a tornado had already hit near the town of Madison and was heading their way, Evans said.

Few municipalities rely on outdoor sirens as a way to warn residents of a tornado, because they require people to be outside and close enough -- within three miles or so at most -- to hear.

Sirens still have role

But sirens can be an effective part of a larger emergency communication system. Duke, UNC and N.C. State universities all have sirens they can use to alert their campuses of immediate danger. They were installed after the massacre at Virginia Tech in April 2007, in which a gunman killed 32 people and then himself.

If the safety office at Duke gets a weather alert indicating a tornado tracking toward campus, it can immediately send e-mail and text messages to students and faculty members, dispatch security officers to buildings, or call. An officer would also hit the button to sound the siren, alerting those outside.

"These type of emergencies warrant immediate action, so the idea is to get the word out now," said Aaron Graves, associate vice president of campus safety and security. "But there is no single device that will guarantee you 100 percent connectivity with everyone."

Both Wilson and Johnston counties have automatic calling systems that can be activated in an emergency to dial every residence within an affected area.

In Wilson County, Deno said, the decision was made not to activate the calling system. It was activated in Johnston County by 911 dispatchers, but in the future, said Derrick Duggins, the county's emergency management coordinator, it likely won't be used for tornadoes.

Deno and Duggins agree the system is useful in the event of hazardous material spills, escaped criminals, missing persons and localized flooding.

But in the case of last Saturday's tornado, Duggins said, "That storm was moving at 50 miles an hour. It's moving faster than these calls can go out."

As a result, both said, there is the risk that residents could get a call telling them to seek shelter, and there won't be time to reach it if the safest shelter is somewhere besides their home.

"We might have two minutes, and we're putting people in cars and putting them on the road," Duggins said. "There is the potential of putting them in harm's way."

Deno said if everybody had a NOAA weather radio, they would all get word at the same instant, increasing their chances of being able to get to safety.

"But it requires some effort on your part," he said. "So don't go to Golden Corral one night. Stay home, eat peanut butter and jelly and a can of tomato soup, and [use the money you save to] buy a weather radio."