COMMENTARY
Heed the Call
In an average year, 1,200 tornadoes
will rip through America. These storms
often develop and move at astonishing
speed, sometimes allowing those in the
path only a few minutes of warning to
find shelter. This renders conventional
warning systems — such as television and radio — inadequate,
since if you’re not listening or watching, you won’t get the
warning in time.
One answer to this problem is a self-activating radio
receiver that emits a loud alarm when a storm warning is
issued. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s (NOAA) Weather Radio All Hazzards
System uses special transmitters that broadcast on assigned
frequencies and can be picked up by special receivers. The
receivers are left in a quiet “standby” mode until a storm
signal is issued, which activates the receiver and emits a loud
warning signal to everyone in earshot.
The awesome, terrible power of tornadoes — and the
importance of early warnings — was once again driven home
May 5, when the town of Greensburg, Kan., was virtually
wiped off the map by an F-5 tornado, with winds in excess of
200 miles per hour and a funnel that was more than a mile
wide. Seeing the photos on the front pages of the morning
newspapers the past few days, one can only wonder how most
of the 1,400 residents survived (there were about 10
confirmed deaths as of this writing). The only recognizable
structure left standing was a grain elevator. The town was
otherwise utterly devastated, looking like the target of a
wartime saturation bombing.
News accounts indicate that residents received a warning
about 20 minutes before the tornado struck, which doubtless
was the reason the number of fatalities was not far higher.
This underscores the importance of a Newsline item on page
39 of this issue, concerning an announcement Agriculture
Secretary Mike Johanns made in March about USDA Rural
Development awarding $415,000 to extend coverage of the
NOAA Weather Radio All Hazzards System.
As of March, the Rural Utilities Program of USDA Rural
Development has awarded 92 grants under its Weather Radio
Transmitter Grant Program to extend the coverage of the
system. These grants cover 100 sites in 26 states and Puerto
Rico. Of the grants, 21 have been awarded to electric and
telecommunications cooperatives. Co-ops have been major supporters of the program
and often make their
telecommunications towers
available for antenna and
transmitter placement. For
more details on the program,
visit: www.usda.gov/rus/telecom/weather/weatherradio.htm,
or call Craig R. Wulf, (202) 720-8427; or e-mail craig.wulf
@wdc.usda.gov.
Tragedy hits home
Among the buildings pulverized in Greensburg was the
USDA Service Center office, which included USDA Rural
Development offices. A day or two after the storm, an e-mail I
received related the story of one staff member and her
husband who lived about a mile south of Greensburg. “Their
two-story home collapsed on them and they were trapped
until neighbors could get them out,” it said. It then relates
how another USDA staffer helped pull “several people out of
homes” before returning to find his own home demolished.
Another “storm dispatch” that landed in my e-mail a day
after the tornado came from the Kansas Cooperative Council
(KCC), which did a quick survey of the tornado’s impact on
its member co-ops and has been doing an outstanding job
marshalling efforts of the co-op community to help the
victims. It says: “Southern Plains Co-op, Lewis/Greensburg –
Four employees lost homes, along with most of the other
residents of the town. The co-op facilities in Greensburg
were, for all essential purposes, lost. Co-ops from the
surrounding areas are lending personnel and equipment to aid
in the relief effort.”
The KCC report goes onto list the storm’s impact on a
number of other area co-ops, adding that, “Our hearts go out
to those families who lost loved ones. We encourage co-op
members to take the opportunity to act on one of our core
cooperative values, commitment to the community, by doing
what you can to help at the appropriate time.”
KCC has set up a disaster relief fund. For more
information contact: Kansas Cooperative Council, PO Box
1747, Hutchinson, Kansas 67504, or leslie@kansasco-op.coop.
Dan Campbell, Editor
