JOPLIN, Mo. - After two years, Sharon Reeve still remembers how she noticed the stormy weather from her home in Joplin and heard the tornado siren, but she didn’t immediately take cover.
“We kind of got very blase about tornado sirens,” said Reeve, who has lived in Joplin for decades. “I was talking to my mother, and the sirens went off the second time.”
She remembers seeing black across the horizon on TV just before she heard the roar of the tornado. She and her husband, John, dashed for a bedroom closet.
Joplin residents like Reeve were so used to hearing tornado sirens that they didn’t respond the first time they heard them on May 22, 2011, according to an assessment the National Weather Service conducted after the EF5 tornado devastated the southern Missouri city.
The National Weather Service had forecast the potential for severe weather several days before the storm hit and issued a tornado watch four hours in advance of the tornado, according to the service. The first sirens sounded about 20 minutes before the tornado hit, but most residents waited to take cover until they had confirmation of the tornado, the assessment states.
A second siren activated a few minutes before residents were convinced that they needed to take cover.
The assessment recommended that emergency officials work to reduce false alarms and siren testing, and change the severe weather warning system so that people would have more information about when to actually take cover.
Joplin emergency management officials upgraded the city’s outdoor warning system and cut the number of activations after the 2011 tornado, said Keith Stammer, director of the Joplin/Jasper County Office of Emergency Management.
Before the tornado, emergency officials activated sirens weekly for testing, Stammer said. When the manual outdoor warning system was activated, businessmen and community members would report back on whether they could hear the sirens.
Under the new system, a computer sends a silent signal to the sirens every day and the sirens signal back that they are working, Stammer said. When a problem is detected, emergency management officials receive an e-mail and investigate further, he said.
Instead of a weekly audible test, the outdoor warning sirens are activated for testing once a month unless thunderstorms are predicted for the Joplin area, Stammer said.
“We’ve gone from 45-plus activations a year to 12,” he said. “That I think has enabled us to help the citizens understand if a siren is going off and it’s not the first Monday morning of the month, you need to go hide.”
Before the May 22, 2011, tornado, the sirens were activated when a tornado warning was issued for any place in Jasper or Newton counties.
Emergency officials now activate sirens when the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning and the tornado’s projected path includes Joplin, Stammer said. The sirens also sound when the weather service reports a storm system with wind speeds of at least 75 mph and the storm’s projected path includes Joplin.
Emergency officials encourage people to take shelter where they are when sirens sound during a storm, Stammer said. When deciding where to take shelter, the city developed a saying: “Inside beats outside. Below ground beats above ground. Lower floors beat upper floors.”
When a storm shelter or basement is not available, a resident should find an interior room that puts as many walls as possible between him and the building’s exterior, Stammer said.
In Joplin, regulations for building construction have changed to provide additional protection during a tornado, Stammer said. Foundation bolts on vertical walls are required to be 4 feet apart instead of 6 feet apart. Also, vertical walls must be secured to rafters with metal hurricane clips.
Storm shelters are more common features now in new construction.
“It went from a ‘nice to have’ to a necessity since the storm,” said C.J. Huff, superintendent of Joplin schools.
The tornado severely damaged or destroyed 10 of 20 Joplin schools. It hit on a Sunday shortly after the Joplin High School graduation ended.
Joplin schools opened construction bids last week on the first five of 10 safe-room projects, Huff said. A tornado shelter is planned for every elementary school that currently doesn’t have one. Temporary school campuses, in use since the tornado, have storm shelters, and shelters are included in plans for all three campuses under construction.
Joplin schools have changed their tornado-emergency plans. Huff said students will no longer take shelter in hallways during tornadoes, something that was common before the 2011 storm.
He said he has video showing debris flying like bullets through school hallways during that tornado. Until the safe rooms are built, teachers will direct students into interior classrooms and closets. Interior classrooms at Joplin High School were almost untouched by the 2011 tornado.
Also, residents across Joplin say they now have weather radios.
Anita Stokes survived the tornado in her home on Virginia Street. Her house was destroyed, and she received a new home through Habitat for Humanity in November 2011. She now has a storm shelter in her backyard. She keeps a chair, flashlight and blanket there.
Stokes said she has a weather radio, and tornado warnings make her nervous.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 05/22/2013