LAGRANGE, Ga. -- A series of tornados blasted through the Southeast yesterday afternoon, killing several people, destroying hundreds of homes and buildings throughout Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. As my fellow professors and college students huddled in the hallway, a similar event happened at the school my wife teaches at and daughter attends, and another where my son goes to pre-kindergarten.
The wisdom of such emergency procedures became clear, as a tornado slammed through the high school in the county immediately south of us, shutting down the place for at least the rest of the week.
As disruptive as yesterday's twisters were, they were nothing compared to the horrific storms of April 28, 2011, where hundreds died across the Southeast in places like Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Calculations I did for Southern Political Report found that if that storm system was classified as a "land hurricane," it would be the third deadliest storm in the U.S. since World War II.
A few weeks earlier than that, I was presenting a paper in Birmingham when the tornado sirens went off. I was flattered that folks moved away from the windows, but stayed to listen to me finish the talk. We later found out that dozens of people died in that Southeast storm system.
Now folks down here are taking things more seriously, like having a plan for where to go. Our kids know to run to the hallway, where we huddled throughout the night of April 28.
But are these plans enough? In the film "Twister," the problem is treated as one of needing an "earlier warning," as if 15 more minutes would make a different. But most Southerners knew the storm was going to hit, hours before it arrived.
Having an emergency plan is nice, but folks down here know where to go to in the house when a warning siren or Weather Channel issues an alert. Yet when a mile-wide tornado slams into Tuscaloosa homes, or the giant twisters reduces homes and hotels to a pile of rubble, there's nowhere to hide.
How is it that what was once called "Tornado Alley," (the Midwest) are seeing just as many tornados, but "Dixie Alley" is seeing twister deaths skyrocket? Grady Dixon of Mississippi State University found that tornados in the Southeast stay on the ground longer. USA Today ran Dixon's story two days before devastating tornado storm system.
There's another problem "Dixie Alley" residents face. Hardly any have storm shelters, while Tornado Alley is rife with them. If the U.S. government wants to help the region, and the economy, they need to get homebuilders to switch to building storm shelters. Otherwise, the region will see more deaths from these powerful twisters.
