After a Tornado, Solace on the Ball Field

 

“I love you to death,” Robert Dale told his children. “If something happens, I’ll see you in heaven.”

Within minutes, the Dales had a clear view of the heavens — from the bathroom, which was spared. The roof was peeled off and the house damaged beyond repair.

No sooner had their heart rates returned to normal than Slade began fielding messages from baseball teammates concerned about his safety. Word was spreading that their school, a deep fly ball’s distance from the Dales’, was wrecked.

Few places were pummeled harder by a gang of tornadoes — at least 178 in 14 states, according to the National Weather Service — than Ringgold, a northwest Georgia town of 2,800.

Eight lives were lost. Two students were storm casualties, one a former football player who had such a big heart, according to Robert Akins, the athletic director and football coach, that he would apologize to an opponent after knocking him down. It was estimated that half of the community’s businesses sustained damage, and at least 75 houses were not salvageable.

After Mother Nature unleashes fury, human nature inspires the targets to resume their routine. For the Ringgold Tigers, that meant jump-starting the pursuit of a state title they were denied in the final a year ago.

Players and parents flocked to the school the next day, eager to rescue the season. Akins could not wait; he drove there in the darkness not long after the storm passed.

“I saw things that broke my heart,” Akins said. When the sun rose, illuminating the scene, “it was worse.”

The high school and the middle school next door were ravaged, the outdoor athletic facilities unplayable. Much of the baseball equipment was a lost cause.

Brent Tucker’s first thought: a season of such promise is over. He coached the team, 21-2 and ranked fifth in Class AAA, that was minus only one senior from last year.

The team began picking up the pieces. Scattered gear and soaked uniforms — the slugger Caleb Jones found his pants hanging in brush — were retrieved amid broken glass, loaded into a truck and distributed to players.

“Looked like a rummage sale,” Tucker said.

His cellphone rang incessantly with offers of bricks, lumber, earth movers, shovels, rakes and helping hands.

“I’m not so sure we wouldn’t have had our stadium already rebuilt,” he said. “People were ready to go to work. It’s almost been overwhelming.”

Fellow coaches cut Ringgold a break by approving the cancellation of its last two regular-season games and waving it through to the tournament. Akins said he and superiors never hesitated accepting: “We want our kids to feel the love the community has. In order to do that, you’ve got to start playing.”

The reward was a “home” game. Akins, inundated by 15 invitations from schools to use their ballparks, chose crosstown Heritage High, which left some still-gracious players asking if a less intense rival were preferable.

On Friday, under a sky so magnificent that it seemed Photoshopped, the Tigers opened a three-game playoff series against Riverwood High with Ringgold banners draped — by the hosts — along the outfield fence. Ringgold’s old English R replaced Heritage’s H in chalk behind home plate.

“It gave you goose bumps,” Tucker said.

Near the baselines, in foul territory, the number 42 was twice inscribed in tribute to the Ringgold supporter and retired baseball coach Bill Womack, who died of cancer in February.

Hanging in the Tigers’ dugout was a tattered and torn American flag that had been ripped by wind off the flagpole at their stadium.

The few hundred fans, nearly all wearing blue “United We Stand” T-shirts, observed a moment of silence.

Friday’s games marked the first event for the school, which is unusable at least until the fall term because the tornadoes struck nine days earlier.

“Who knows? This may be the last chance for these players” while associated with the existing school, said David Kafka, the father of Corey. Both had been at the school, returning bats, 15 minutes before it was hit. “They are fighting in case we can’t rebuild.”

The parents’ appreciation for the season’s resumption was evident in their words and smiles.

 

In Tornado Zone, Many Ask, ‘How Can We Help?’

It is hard to imagine what it will take to put life back together in the states torn by last week’s storms. One estimate, by the risk model forecaster EQECAT, put the insured property losses between $2 billion and $5 billion.

Still, the contractors were hoping to secure their share of three contracts the city plans to award for the cleanup. People here expect them to be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to a trade still hobbled by the real estate crash and recession.

“It’s an awful situation, but this is how we can help,” said Jordan Huffstetler, 29, a general contractor who drove in from Birmingham, Ala.

On Saturday, the number of people reported killed in eight states during last week’s storms rose again, to 349. In Alabama, 250 bodies have been recovered, though the hundreds of people still missing suggested that many bodies remained undiscovered.

The last time more people were killed in a series of tornadoes in the United States was March 18, 1925, when almost 700 died in a storm that raged through Illinois, Indiana and Missouri.

President Obama declared two other states, Georgia and Mississippi, federal disasters late Friday night. Although the brunt of the casualties are in Alabama, Mississippi sustained the fiercest part of the storm. The National Weather Service confirmed that a tornado ranked a rare EF5 — the worst possible with winds as high as 205 miles per hour — hit the northeast part of the state and contributed to the near obliteration of tiny Smithville, where 14 bodies have been found so far.

Over all, Mississippi lost 35 people to the storm, and emergency officials reported that at least 1,822 homes were damaged. Georgia, which had a tornado nearly as strong as the one in Mississippi, has recorded 15 deaths in the northern part of the state. Tennessee had 34 deaths and has asked for federal assistance.

Hundreds of thousands in several Southern states were facing a fourth day without power, and dozens of shelters remained open.

The recovery “will be measured in inches, not miles,” Mayor Walter Maddox of Tuscaloosa said Saturday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was working to bring trailers to the region. The plight of thousands of newly homeless people was starting to surface.

Judy Pool, 55, spent part of Sunday at community center in Tuscaloosa that had been turned into a shelter, flipping through donated clothes and shoes to find something in her size. She could get water, medical aid and food.

Her home is destroyed. She has her cellphone and her wallet. “I’m staying with my sister until, well, I don’t know until when,” she said.

The urge to help those like Ms. Pool gripped people all over the country.

Although emergency officials have cautioned people to not simply show up with trucks or cars filled with donations, Elisabeth Omilami, executive director of the Hosea Feed The Hungry and Homeless program in Atlanta, already had a couple of truckloads of water and toiletries ready to take to churches in Alabama.

“Why would you say don’t send stuff?” she asked. “How much can you hurt another family by giving them clothes when they don’t have any?”

Other people are doing what they can. Grocery stores set up trucks in parking lots to hand out free water. Amy Audette, a special effects makeup artist in Los Angeles who grew up in Alabama, started soliciting donations of food and clothing via her Twitter account. She said she would send whatever she gets to family in the state to distribute.

Chris and Rachel Stephens, a couple in their 20s whose home was spared, cooked a batch of apple pancakes and headed to a heavily damaged Tuscaloosa neighborhood. They hung a sign — “Free hope pancakes for all!” — figuring a little comfort food might take people’s minds off the emotional toll.

“Now it’s starting to set in,” Mr. Stephens said. “Everybody’s like, ‘What’s the next step?’?”

Robbie Brown reported from Tuscaloosa, and Kim Severson from Atlanta.

 

Tornado Season Intensifies, Without Clear Scientific Consensus on Why

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All the warning sirens echoing across the Great Plains, Midwest and Southeast this month leave little doubt that the tornado season — which has plowed a trail of destruction through communities from Oklahoma to Wisconsin to Georgia — is off to an unusually busy start.

So far this year, tornadoes have killed 41 people and torn apart countless neighborhoods and, this weekend, one major airport.

Now, as the country braces for several more days of potentially violent weather, meteorologists say the number of April tornadoes is on track to top the current record. There have been, according to preliminary estimates, about 250 tornadoes so far this month and, in all likelihood, more are still to come, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

“It’s unusual but it does happen,” said Howard Bluestein, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma who specializes in tornado research. “This isn’t a sign that the world is about to end.”

Those same experts note that drawing conclusions about the true size of, or reason for, an increase in tornado activity is difficult because historical statistics are unreliable due to changes in the way storms are tracked and measured.

Although the average number of April tornadoes steadily increased from 74 a year in the 1950s to 163 a year in the 2000s, nearly all of the increase is of the least powerful tornadoes that may touch down briefly without causing much damage. That suggests better reporting is largely responsible for the increase.

There are, on average, 1,300 tornadoes each year in the United States, which have caused an average of 65 deaths annually in recent years.

The number of tornadoes rated from EF1 to EF5 on the enhanced Fujita scale, used to measure tornado strength, has stayed relatively constant for the past half century at about 500 annually. But in that time the number of confirmed EF0 tornadoes has steadily increased to more than 800 a year from less than 100 a year, said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

In April 1974, for example, there was a record 267 tornadoes reported, but the actual number that occurred is believed to be closer to 500.

“Today we seem to know about every single tree branch knocked down,” Mr. Carbin said. “We have eyes everywhere, and we have radar and satellite. It would be very difficult for a tornado to sneak through unnoticed.”

Tornadoes form when warm moist air combines with powerful dynamic winds inside a thunderstorm, sending a funnel cloud spinning toward the ground. They are most common in spring, typically peaking in May.

Though scientists believe that climate change will contribute to increasingly severe weather phenomena, including hurricanes and thunderstorms, there is little consensus about how it may affect tornadoes.

It remains unclear, partly because of the lack of historical data and partly because of their unpredictable nature, whether they will increase in number or strength or geographic range.

The large number of tornadoes so far may simply reflect normal variability, said Mr. Brooks.

Those assurances do not mean much to people like Kandice Shaw, a frequent business traveler who arrived at her hometown airport in St. Louis to find most of the windows boarded up and many other signs of storm damage. She worried about the increase in violent weather this spring. “We’ve had nothing but tornadoes,” she said. “I feel like I’m living in the Land of Oz.”

 

Tornado Season Intensifies, Without Clear Scientific Consensus on Why

 

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All the warning sirens echoing across the Great Plains, Midwest and Southeast this month leave little doubt that the tornado season — which has plowed a trail of destruction through communities from Oklahoma to Wisconsin to Georgia — is off to an unusually busy start.

So far this year, tornadoes have killed 41 people and torn apart countless neighborhoods and, this weekend, one major airport.

Now, as the country braces for several more days of potentially violent weather, meteorologists say the number of April tornadoes is on track to top the current record. There have been, according to preliminary estimates, about 250 tornadoes so far this month and, in all likelihood, more are still to come, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

“It’s unusual but it does happen,” said Howard Bluestein, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma who specializes in tornado research. “This isn’t a sign that the world is about to end.”

Those same experts note that drawing conclusions about the true size of, or reason for, an increase in tornado activity is difficult because historical statistics are unreliable due to changes in the way storms are tracked and measured.

Although the average number of April tornadoes steadily increased from 74 a year in the 1950s to 163 a year in the 2000s, nearly all of the increase is of the least powerful tornadoes that may touch down briefly without causing much damage. That suggests better reporting is largely responsible for the increase.

There are, on average, 1,300 tornadoes each year in the United States, which have caused an average of 65 deaths annually in recent years.

The number of tornadoes rated from EF1 to EF5 on the enhanced Fujita scale, used to measure tornado strength, has stayed relatively constant for the past half century at about 500 annually. But in that time the number of confirmed EF0 tornadoes has steadily increased to more than 800 a year from less than 100 a year, said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

In April 1974, for example, there was a record 267 tornadoes reported, but the actual number that occurred is believed to be closer to 500.

“Today we seem to know about every single tree branch knocked down,” Mr. Carbin said. “We have eyes everywhere, and we have radar and satellite. It would be very difficult for a tornado to sneak through unnoticed.”

Tornadoes form when warm moist air combines with powerful dynamic winds inside a thunderstorm, sending a funnel cloud spinning toward the ground. They are most common in spring, typically peaking in May.

Though scientists believe that climate change will contribute to increasingly severe weather phenomena, including hurricanes and thunderstorms, there is little consensus about how it may affect tornadoes.

It remains unclear, partly because of the lack of historical data and partly because of their unpredictable nature, whether they will increase in number or strength or geographic range.

The large number of tornadoes so far may simply reflect normal variability, said Mr. Brooks.

Those assurances do not mean much to people like Kandice Shaw, a frequent business traveler who arrived at her hometown airport in St. Louis to find most of the windows boarded up and many other signs of storm damage. She worried about the increase in violent weather this spring. “We’ve had nothing but tornadoes,” she said. “I feel like I’m living in the Land of Oz.”