
What Facebook, Blue Jeans, and Metal Signs Taught Us About Tornado Science - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/what-facebook-blue-jeans-and-metal-signs-taught-us-about-tornado-science
======
cjslep
> missing one of the nation’s largest nuclear power plants by less than two
> miles

I was fortunate to work for Dr. Twisdale, one of a handful of people (if not
the only man) who provides wind hazard engineering support for nuclear power
plants looking to renew their license. The biggest division are the two kinds
of wind examined: tornadic versus straight-line gusts (thunderstorms,
hurricanes, etc). What winds up being the most vulnerable are support
buildings to the nuclear power plant and not the plant itself.

The most surreal experience working for him was on a NIST contract where I had
to examine a lot of data about the Joplin, Missouri 2011 tornado. Normally,
the numbers of engineering hide the personal touch of impacting people's
lives, but examining various videos and reports really energized my younger
self as working on a high-impact project. The NIST report starting on page 6
really is brutal to read [0]. Then there is the National Geographic
documentary which really captures the human toll and the resilience of the
survivors [1]. Then there is the video that tourists (I believe?) were taking
when they crossed the tornado's path twice [2]. Then there is the video of
their brand-new middle school at the time, which security footage captured the
devastation [3]. What made this particular tornado devastating was the fact
that it hit Joplin's major hospital which serviced the region, and took that
hospital offline.

> “There is virtually no literature on that at all,” Knox told me when I posed
> this question to him, “but I will give you my guess.”

That is because most engineering modeling is concerned with the creation of
"missiles", such as a telephone pole going through someone's wall. For that
there is plenty of literature, and even a single certified code by the NRC:
TORMIS [4] (Written in Fortran 77 I believe).

Overall, wind engineering is incredibly tricky but very rewarding when done
right. Sadly, it is not the "hip" nor most popular career paths.

[0] [http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-
search.cfm?pub_id...](http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-
search.cfm?pub_id=915628)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG2DTAzZAzw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG2DTAzZAzw)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CburjPYmSdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CburjPYmSdo)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64covicCcIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64covicCcIY)

[4]
[http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0802/ML080230578.pdf](http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0802/ML080230578.pdf)

~~~
hga
Speaking as someone who was born and raised in Joplin, and retired to it in
time for the tornado to trash my apartment that was right at the edge of the
zone of total destruction ([http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/](http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/)):

 _What made this particular tornado devastating was the fact that it hit
Joplin 's major hospital which serviced the region, and took that hospital
offline._

We lucked out, in that by then St. Johns wasn't even the city's biggest major
hospital, although the Freeman complex was a frighteningly few number of
blocks away from it, we could have lost both and probably suffered twice as
many deaths. At St. John a visitor and 5 people on ventilators died, but the
hospital was otherwise successfully evacuated in an hour and a half as random
people with those eeeevil large vehicles we in flyover country are castigated
for owning just showed up and moved most of them. Over a several day period
the local ambulance service transported over 1,000 people, a number to much
more distant hospitals since I'm sure Freeman's ICU was way too small.

We plan for these sorts of things, and had enough spare hospital capacity,
including smaller ones in the county and e.g. the beds for the nursing school
at the local college were deliberately fully functional so they could help.
The St. John's healthcare workers took their supplies and set up at our big
multipurpose Memorial Hall, and per these [http://www.aocoohns.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/Walker.pd...](http://www.aocoohns.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/Walker.pdf) excellent overview slides (WARNING, some
_really_ ugly pictures in the latter part of that, you might want to stop at
the first CAT scan) a lot of "triage centers spontaneously developed at
schools and intersections along the damage path" (we're the sort of people who
march to the sound of cannons). Here's some pictures of those including I'm
sure Memorial Hall:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=joplin+tornado+triage+center...](https://www.google.com/search?q=joplin+tornado+triage+centers&tbm=isch)

The critical cases from St. John's and the tornado went to Freeman, which was
a zoo; per the above overview, there were more than 200 patients in a 41 bed
ER running on emergency generators. This first hand account by the Stormdoctor
(a storm chasing internist) is _excellent_ :
[http://stormdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-response-
mode-...](http://stormdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/06/first-response-mode-
may-22-2011-joplin.html) (and no pictures, but some ugly trauma described, a
hopeless case triaged with morphine, etc.).

WRT to [3], security footage from our brand new middle school, a sobering
thing to realize is that we have it because the tornado barely touched the
building and I'm sure didn't damage the recording equipment inside. The school
was near the edge of the zone of total destruction, like my apartment complex,
and probably got hit by spinnoff vortexes or whatever.

The edge was very capricious, note from page 35 of the NIST report [0] the
severe damage to the bottom, south part of the Wal-Mart. My part of the
apartment complex was _immediately_ to the west, along the tornado's line of
travel, and all that happened was that the "clubhouse"/office etc. got
destroyed, and every top, 3rd story apartment got breached as well a few 2nd
story ones on the east ... and no one in any of these, including the Wal-Mart,
died.... But there were people inside running for the more secure back
inventory section as the roof peeled off overhead, per an eye-witness report
from a cashier I talked to later.

Back to the middle school: there was no serious damage visible on its north
(nearest the tornado path) and west (the direction the tornado was going)
facades. Officially 65% or more intact, we could have just repaired it, but
that's another story about how the long term aftermath of such events can be a
stage for megalomaniacal narcissists and carpetbagging sociopaths.

In the zone of total destruction there was very little other than piles of
rubble....

Anyway, thanks for your attention to all this and the link to the NIST report,
I'll look at it more closely to see if I can figure out the edge effects in my
location. Which a ... NWS team, as I recall, that I ran into estimated the
winds there were only 120 MPH based on e.g. how the bolts of the cell towers
were sheared off.

~~~
cjslep
Thanks for sharing your experience! It is one thing to read reports and
another thing entirely to have gone through it all. I appreciate you writing
about what must be a tough subject.

It is all too easy to get carried away with the Joplin tornado from an
engineering standpoint. It provided quite a lot of data on structural
responses, responses by people, warning systems, etc. But researching the
event hit me hard; keeping the human cost in mind as the ultimate goal gave
the other numbers much more significance.

I am happy to say the work is still ongoing. Unfortunately, my small part of
it is complete.

Edit: Finally found the video that really put the numbers in perspective for
me [0]. It is one thing to calculate "175 mph" winds, and another to see it
tear up a family's backyard.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhU579An6PI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhU579An6PI)

~~~
hga
Well, less than 90 MPH I would guess for the backyard, seeing as how the
structure the camera was attached to didn't fail etc.

You're welcome, and, yeah, I suppose a tough subject, this is the first time
I've watched any live videos from this event 4 years ago. Can't say how glad I
was when the tourists, who had a clue, and thankfully decided not to shelter
at the Home Depot, got past the Lowes on Range line. The video starts right at
the edge of major destruction (if you look at the street view of that Payless
Shoes you'll notice they have a shiny brand new building) and they crossed
right through the zone of total destruction. More later, probably, have a
phone call.

------
smoyer
My daughter, my wife and I visited the University of Alabama campus in late
February of 2011 (about a month before the tornado) and started her college
career there in August. When we returned to drop her off, the scale of the
damage where the tornado ripped through Tuscaloosa was astonishing. There was
an entire subdivision of suburban (stick-built) homes that looked like a pile
of matchsticks. And there was a surprisingly small interface between the
"completely destroyed" areas and "untouched" areas.

By the time she graduated this May, the damage has been cleared away but the
path of this tornado is still visible. There are many brand-new buildings and
a lot of open ground, but none of the new construction aligns with the grid of
streets in the area. For a family from Pennsylvania (where we rarely see
tornados or their aftermath), it was quite eye-opening.

------
frogpelt
I live in an area that was hit by tornadoes that day I found an interior door
from a manufactured home in my back yard.

The closest mobile home that was hit was probably 10 miles away "the way the
crow flies". This door was about 28 inches by 78 inches and the door knob had
been bent and sheared off. It probably weighed at least 15 pounds but all that
surface area gave it plenty of lift.

It was a startling find.

------
TrevorJ
Tornado took out my grandfather's farm many years back (At 80-odd years old,
he was out on his bulldozer 12 hours later, rebuilding). The tornado pulled
the back window out of an old car and deposited it in one piece yards away.
Tornado's are freaky.

