Tornadoes and Their Warnings

Cidette Rice
Mr.Roddy
IHSS
9/16/19

Tornadoes and Their Warnings

In the early summer of 2011, a tornado going through Joplin, Missouri, claimed 162 lives and injured more than 1000 citizens. It had a weighty damage cost of 3 billion dollars,
and has been the deadliest tornado that the U.S has faced. Due to the severity of the
tornado, many homeowners are taking caution when it comes to such natural disasters.
They invest in a ‘safe room’, one that is built to be tornado brief and typically comes in the
form of a bunker under the house, similar to a concrete lined basement that’s stocked with
food, water, and entertainment if the family is stuck there for an extended period of time.
Sadly, however, this method of creating your own safe room is costly, and leaves the poor
community at a disadvantage against tornadoes. When you take into account the fact
that the poor also tend to have less access to sources that would release warnings
(TVs, radios, phones etc), it leaves them another leg down in the race against nature.
The elderly and those with disabilities are vulnerable to tornadoes as well, seeing as a
warning could come too late and they cannot physically get to a safe place in time. Warning
pose another danger too, and with some citizens not taking them seriously and becoming
numb to them, due to the amount of times alarms are sent out and turn out to be either weak tornadoes or false alarms. 
In the event of natural disasters, effective and accurate communication should always be the top priority, and should be placed before rescues and recovery work. If details about the disaster were released earlier than they are now, many citizens would have time to decide what to prioritize (property and travel wise) and could provide a more secure defense against floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. without rushing into evacuating. A more effective form of communication could possibly be government-supplied radios for areas that are prone to severe weather. The city wouldn’t have to worry about homes without power because of the battery-based radios, and because they would be government-issued, affordability is out of the question. Although this would lead to some complications within the government, it would pay off in the long run. With that, I believe that mandatory rescues and disaster relief would be cut down by at least half! Citizens would be more informed pre-hand, and as stated earlier, could make well thought-out decisions that involve their property and family when being updated on the natural disaster’s status. Damage costs would go down, less lives would be put at risk and the community would benefit overall.





Caldas, Marcellus M. Department of Geography, 2012.

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/natural-disaster-much-space-for-progress-2167-0587.1000e103.pdf

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