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That particular day of the outbreak--it was a Friday--there was a lot of communication
going on prior to the event. The event in our area didn't begin until mid-afternoon
and continued into the early evening. At the end of a very long day, we knew we had many
areas to visit with a limited amount of staff in order to accommodate those needs. So we
tried to organize teams to follow specific paths of the mesocyclones that did cause the damage.
We've never had that many tornadoes in such a short period of time. And towards
the end of the storm it became apparent that as the supervisor I was going to have to organize
these tornado damage teams within the next 6 to 8 to 12 hours to get down there and start
documenting this event and talking to the emergency management people to see where we
had all the damage. The problem was we had so many damage reports coming in that we didn't
know where to begin. We actually had to sit down with a map and start plotting a lot of
this stuff on a map so we could see where some of these long line tornado tracks were
so that we could get organized to send people out. Well most of the people were tired. They
had already worked 10, 12, 14 hours. But we sat down, we plotted everything on a map,
and we started to figure out how many groups of people we needed. If there was a part of
the event where I felt out of control, that I didn't feel like we had the situa--it was
after the event had happened and the scope of it started to set in. We were tired. We
had worked a very long 12 hour plus day, 14 hour day, and already the phone calls were
coming in. When are you gonna go survey? What are these tornadoes going to be rated? Do
we have enough resources to cover these long tornado tracks and numerous reports of damage?
And it became overwhelming. And you just wanted to stop and say, I can't do this anymore.
I gotta--my emotions--I'm exhausted, I'm spent, I need to collect myself before we address
this. But you can't do that. So we needed to assemble our teams, and we have great people
at this office that scurried around and formed teams, formed a game plan, where we all collaborated
and said, we need a team to go this place, we need a team to go this place. And once
we got the teams identified and the areas that we needed to investigate, it all started
to fill in. And we got some great help from the Weather Service office in Cleveland offering
up some of their resources. So by midnight we had a game plan. And now it was gotta go
home, put these emotions to bed, because tomorrow is gonna be 10 times as tough as today because
we gotta go see that damage. And most of our surveys are--they're kind of--the scenes are
kind of sanitized. There's structural damage but luckily we don't have too much loss of
life with these events. And this one was different. We did have loss of life. So you're going
in to these areas as part of a survey team and it's not just somebody putting their house
back together. You may be going into areas where people have lost neighbors or even possibly
relatives. So you want to get the best information so the teams can go in there and at least
have the specifics of where they need to go, because they're going to be dealing with the
emotional aspect too as they go into these areas and talk to these people and get the
accounts of what had happened. The difficulty that can arise in that is trying to plan routes
that you can take in order to view the damage. Do you have access to where the damage occurred?
Do you have reliable reports of damage? So not only does it involve coordination among
the staff here at the local weather forecast office, it involves heavy coordination with
county emergency management--and they're in the middle of a recovery, rescue and recovery
effort, so they are very much busy and occupied with high priority tasks. Coordinating with
the county and state police, coordinating with local police, local emergency and county
officials. Trying to be respectful. They have a job to do in rescue and recovery to their
community. Our job is to piece together what happened, what type of damage these particular
storms put down, what the scale of the damage was, where a tornado maybe lifted and then
came back down, all from the same distinct mesocyclone. To try to figure out the best
way to obtain the most information in as timely a manner as possible. So I went and got maps
of all the areas where we had significant tornadoes go through, and tried to get the
rotation tracks--that can kind of help you zero in on the areas of greatest destruction.
We put those on google maps, printed those out, put them up on the web so they could
download them if they had a device where they could do that. And kind of assembled all that
information, and I had started at 7 o'clock or a little before 7 o'clock that morning
and this was going up 10, 11 o'clock that night. So the day was getting long, but there
was a lot of people who were going to have long days that next day also. So that's why
I tried to assemble what I could and get some information online for them to be able to
get in there and not have to worry so much about getting to the right spot. And really
put their efforts into the survey and kind of dealing with the scenes they were going
to see, whether it be the destruction or injuries or even loss of lives. It was just unbelievable
the amount of willingness that the staff had conveyed to me. Everybody wanted to be part
of helping out that day. We had people from the Ohio River Forecast Center come over and
volunteer to help. We had somebody from the Cleveland weather forecast office come down
to help. And we had several people who had been up for long hours actually volunteer
to help. And this was not going to be an easy task. They were going to have to do very,
very long drives. A lot of the stuff that they were going to see was gonna be very,
very, very unpleasant. And it was very emotionally hard to see that. You worked the radar, you
put out the warnings and then you go down there and you see the utter destruction. And
then somehow you're supposed to document that--it was a very difficult task. And I was really
amazed at the staff's willingness to just jump in even though they were really tired
and just go down there and get the job done. And it took several days to complete that,
so very impressed. I've been working for a long time at both the weather forecast side
and now the river forecast center side so we're kind of all integrated together as one
big team and Ken Haydu had brought up that it was be pretty busy and I had said to him
that you know of course since we're all one family that if you need RFC help or something--either
answering phones during the event or post-service post-assessments or whatever--just to let
me know. My involvement was to be able to get the Ohio State Highway Patrol to bring
a helicopter where we could do some aerial surveys for the next morning. So as our 5
ground survey teams were preparing to head out that next morning, a helicopter from the
Ohio State Police was coming in--landed in our front yard to prepare for the aerial survey.
We were able to follow the tracks of the EF-3 that hit Moscow, through Clermont and Brown
counties--the EF-2 that went through Adams County--and a few other tornado tracks in
Ohio as well. The goal while we were up there was to take pictures of the damage we were
observing, take a GPS track of everything that we could see, and get out tornado survey
information as accurate as possible. We came in early on that Saturday morning. I think,
you know, it went pretty well--it was pretty well organized from my perspective, that the
WFO had nice packages made up of what information for your damage survey. So, to me that's important
because it helps you quickly get spun up and so there's not chaos going on. And then they
had lots of contact--stuff already set up for contact information to the emergency managers
in each of those counties. And so we were, with that information, we were able to establish
those calls and set up meeting times and that with each county to get tours into the harder
hit areas--areas that you can't get into--and that's the important thing. So the following
day myself and one of our interns, Andrew, did a survey on the tornado--the EF-3 tornado--that
came through a little town called Moscow, Ohio, which is right along the river. And
then went for a number of miles through Clermont County in southern Ohio and into Brown County.
So we started out right along the river in the town called Moscow. Worked with an emergency
manager to have a contact there who would take us through the damaged area. And they
were extremely helpful to us, very nice. So we did survey that area. The town of Moscow
was very hard-hit. A lot of homes were demolished. Unfortunately they did have a death there.
That was by far the most significant damage that we saw that day. And it was pretty surreal,
it was almost like you were driving into a movie set or something and not something that
actually hit and affected real peoples' lives in a real town that damaged most of this little,
small town on the Ohio River. So it was a very, very strange sense to witness that.
The town had kind of been quarantined off--there was no one allowed in the town. So we were
just able to go there and assess the damage and not have to interfere with people's lives
and the cleanup and the mourning and things of that nature. I have completed quite a number
of damage surveys in my 35 plus year career, and this particular damage survey--they're
all difficult, but when you have a loss of life they're especially difficult. You don't
really want to impose on people at the time when, you know, things are at their worst.
But I've generally found that people are very nice, willing to share with you information
and allow you to get the information that you need for the survey. So it's a very difficult
thing to do, but necessary from our point of view. It was very interesting to see tornado
damage from the helicopter. I had never seen tornado damage at all, ever in my life, until
I had gotten up in the helicopter and now I'm seeing these strong tornado tracks that
have scarred the landscape of our southern Ohio communities. And I think the thing that
sticks out to me the most was when we flew over the community of Moscow, right on the
Ohio River, where an EF-3 tornado crossed over from Kentucky. And we're looking down
from the helicopter on these beautiful homes right on the riverfront, and we see the paint
color in the upstairs bedrooms. That's just something that you're not expecting, and that's
something that really makes it hit home about how serious this situation was. You can't
prepare yourself for what you're going to see when you go out and look at that level
of tornado damage and this was F3--high end EF-3 tornado damage, which after you get to
a point where peoples' homes are demolished, whether it's EF-3, EF-4, EF-5, it really doesn't
matter. People lost their homes, people lost lives. I had never been out to see tornado
damage of that magnitude. And I won't forget coming into the area, the first--coming up
over the hill in northern Kentucky there in the Peach Grove area and seeing it laid out
in front of me. Even being in meteorology my whole life and seeing tornado damage on
TV, you don't--until you come up over the hill and you see it laid out in front of you,
what it really looks like, you can't put it into words and you really don't want to. You
want to--you want to just break down and cry, but you can't because you just don't wanna
do that. So you have to remove yourself and come at it from a scientist--'cause that's
what we're there to do--we're there to rate tornadoes as scientists. You have to remove
yourself and anybody who responds to any disaster will tell you that same thing. You have to
remove the human element out of it or you can't do your job. So to see it all in front
of me and--I had to take a moment and I had to have my driver pull the car over and I
just had to get myself collected for when we were going to be going into this area.
Some of the damage that I saw such as a--I particularly saw one of these houses that
probably was a one story house was actually picked up and thrown into a ravine. And I
thought, wow--this tornado must have had some real wind power with it. It was just complete
devastation. It was a very sad thing to observe. One of the big things that I think sometimes
we forget being scientists is--you know, we're so focused on looking at was it an EF-1 or
2. But the bottom line is you're going into areas where it's very personal. And so I always
try to take time to listen to families as well 'cause that's just their process. So
we were listening to families that--like the one family where--you always see just how
close it comes to having not a lot more loss of life. Because there was one family where
the maybe 6 or 7 year old girl--she just insisted-- they were in a mobile home and she wanted to go
down to the neighbor's house. She was very afraid like no other time kind of thing. And
they had a basement and they went there and so I was--we were talking afterwards because
we found like couches almost a mile away from their home. It would have been not-so-good.
Gary Garnett and I were part of the assessment team--Gary Garnett is the WCM from Cleveland
who drove down here that morning to be able to do the damage assessment--or help out with
that. So we drove to the Holton, Indiana area of where that tornado had struck. One of the
things that surprised me doing that survey--a couple things actually--one is that the actual
path of the tornado on the ground seemed to be much shorter than I was expecting it to
be, based the signature that I saw on radar the night before. The second thing that kind
of surprised me is just how complete the damage is. You know, for example, block walls or
brick walls aren't just knocked down. They're completely disassembled. Every brick is disassembled
from every other brick. It's very complete destruction. And that's what surprised me
the most about a tornado. We worked very closely with the local emergency personnel. There
were police and fire personnel and emergency management personnel that had an emergency
operations center on station, both in Grant County and in Kenton County. And we coordinated
with them, and we knew the damage would be high-end. We then went to Crittenden and viewed
a subdivision that had pretty, pretty high-end EF-3 damage, where there was a lot of destruction
in that area. We take time to consider that damage, to make sure we're seeing everything.
Part of the challenge with a damage survey is clean-up might already be underway. So
you want to try to capture that damage to get as much evidence as possible to make your
distinction between the different types of EF scales in the tornado. We had the media
walking with us, we had the emergency managers who were awesome of taking us around to all
the known areas to get right in. Because it's a long day 'cause it covered three counties
and it was in very rural area going up and down the terrain and that. When you have these
big events, you can only do so much on the ground. I mean, it has to be aerial. This
was remote stuff, you know, in remote areas and a lot of them were. And I think without
those aerials to help confirm and help give it that perspective its pretty difficult.
When you get these widespread ones, which only come along for probably most of the people
at the weather office here what, 1 or 2 in a career at this area? It's not like being
out in Norman, Oklahoma or something. It was very advantageous to be able to combine the
information we received from the aerial surveys with what the ground teams were determining
in their more specific location-based surveying attempts. They were looking at things such
as structures, buildings, how these things were damaged, and determining the strength
of the tornadoes. But from the air, what we were able to provide was a wide-scale overview
that sort of helped put what they were seeing on the ground into a much bigger context of
these long-track tornadoes that we were dealing with. We then moved on to southern Kenton
County and went through the Piner area. We did find evidence of homes that were completely
wiped off their foundation. And part of our task is to take into account again the structural
integrity of any of all the buildings that were damaged. And there's a certain level
of criteria once you get to the EF-4 level--you have to look for anchoring and securing and
was it a brick home versus a siding home? Steel frame? You know, different things like
that. It was certainly the highest level of tornadic damage that I had ever seen in my
Weather Service career. I've been in the Weather Service 20 years and been on dozens of damage
surveys. I'd never seen damage to the extent where trees were entirely stripped of their
bark and taken down to the nubs of branches. I'd never seen homes completely gone from
their foundation and securely anchored homes completely gone from their foundation. There
were cars that were tossed over 100 yards and completely damaged. There were cars that
were just gone and you saw little remnants here and there of what had been a vehicle.
Just complete and utter destruction. What really struck me, it was myself and one other
person completing the damage survey, was the extent of the damage and how in the path,
particularly in the Piner area, as it reached the EF-4 level in a fairly small area, just
the utter and complete devastation. Essentially an EF-4 tornado, for the most part, is not
survivable above ground. Doing damage surveys and seeing manufactured homes and double-wides
and mobile homes, you're driving along and you see slabs where homes existed. They're
not there anymore. There's no trace of them. They're lofted over the next ravine. They're
hanging in the trees a quarter mile away. And you asked neighbors and people standing
around there, did people die here? And they say, no. They got the warning and they got
out. And as tragic as all the death and the injuries and the damage is, you hear that
and you think, we might have had a role in that. I am never one to think that we're the
sole reason why those people are still alive. But we're part of the partnership that makes
that warning process work. And when you know that and you see it first hand and you see
that person's face say, no they heard it coming. They heard the warning. They had 15 minutes
to go to their neighbors with a basement. They're still alive. Wow. I mean, that's the--that's
what we're doing. That's our job right there. And that's a pretty powerful thing.
Having a county warning area where we serve 52 counties--it's fairly large--we have a
fairly active severe weather season, a fairly active flood season. We very much value the
partnership that we have with the local communities and the county emergency management director.
They have a job to do on rescue, recovery, mitigation. But yet they find time to work
with us and the needs that we have in order to piece together the puzzles of a storm.
And recognizing that the individual home owners that you see have just lost everything. And
in doing those--the job of a damage survey--it's very important to be respectful of the recovery
that is going on. And I can't have high enough praise for the county and local officials
who accommodated our needs and still being respectful of home owners and business owners
who did lose everything. You can't go through a damage survey of this degree without coming
away a changed person. One of the things I thought was interesting, too--you know, we
went down first thing in the morning. It took us a couple hours to get there. But yet by
that time there were already dozens of utility trucks trying to reestablish power and cut
down old poles and install new poles. And I was pretty impressed with how quickly that
was all coming together again so soon after the tornadoes. A lot of places before we got
there had tarps completely covering the roof and it seemed like a lot of it was picked
up already and we're only talking maybe 12 hours after it had happened. I can tell you
that all those feelings of sadness and despair were so quickly replaced by feelings of uplift
and power and human spirit because you saw so many homes with so many people on the roofs
putting blue tarp down or making piles of rubble. And the few people that I had the
guts to talk to because you have to imagine their emotional state. The few people I talked
to said, I've got people on my roof--I don't even know who they are! But they're fixing
my roof! And that theme was repeated numerous times through the day. I've got people serving
me a sandwich, I don't know who they are. That's the human spirit. And so as the day
went along and we looked at so much damage and talked to community partners and emergency
management directors and so many of them said the response is just tremendous. And you see
that and you see cars lined up for miles in these high damage zones. And it's all people
helping out and as tragic and terrible as the damage is, you see all that help and you think,
there is good people.