Random General Headlines

[Deepvoid]

Seems pretty arbitrary how you are choosing what is a sufficient risk to be concerned about.

For instance, Earthquakes have killed more people in the US over the last 100 years than school shootings.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak.../us_deaths.php

I won't deny that more people die from tornados every year than earthquakes.


Most people living in CA know that a big earthquake will happen at least once in their lifetime. They just don't know when. Does that make it ridiculous to put myself and my family in that situation? I sure as hell would love a 30min notice that a big quake was going to hit, much like the people in OK received before this tornado.

Dude, I'm just saying that if there's one place where it's inevitable you'll get hit by a tornado it's in Tornado Alley.
It happens every year. Outbreaks every year around April-May. I personally don't feel like this to be an acceptable risk.

I don't know what you're trying to prove by arguing with me on this. There's nothing to argue about. It's a personal feeling.

[mfte]

Man kills himself in Notre Dame because he doesnt like gays or the muslim-i-fication of France.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/21/world/...ath/?hpt=hp_t3

[Chaotix]

Man kills himself in Notre Dame because he doesnt like gays or the muslim-i-fication of France.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/21/world/...ath/?hpt=hp_t3

Gotta love the inherent irony of a guy ranting that there's something wrong with gay and muslim people then killing himself over it. Well, that and suicide being a mortal sin in Catholicism so he wouldn't be let in the gates of Heaven, ie. he didn't really prove any point other than that he didn't know much about his own church. What a waste (his attempt at a point... and him as a human being, too).

[DigitalChaos]

Wait, SEE THIS.




The entire friggin' United States of America is in danger of some natural disaster, all the time.

Dude, I'm just saying that if there's one place where it's inevitable you'll get hit by a tornado it's in Tornado Alley.
It happens every year. Outbreaks every year around April-May. I personally don't feel like this to be an acceptable risk.

I don't know what you're trying to prove by arguing with me on this. There's nothing to argue about. It's a personal feeling.

Screw you guys! I'm moving to Detroit. It's safer for my family.

[DigitalChaos]

Man kills himself in Notre Dame because he doesnt like gays or the muslim-i-fication of France.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/21/world/...ath/?hpt=hp_t3

If only this was everyone's response to failed bigotry. One down....



Spoiler: yea, i said it.
It's ok because it doesn't violate the NAP

[neorev]

A heartwarming video among the horror of the tornado that struck Oklahoma...

[neorev]

I'm not ashamed to admit it, this video made me teary eyed

[DigitalChaos]

That is an awesome video. As I saw them peeling off the rubble I was think "oh fuck, please let him be in one piece and not heavily injured" because that could have gone another direction. It's almost so perfect that I was suspicious of it being setup but... i'm just going to take it and be happy about the world today

[Deepvoid]

Here are other videos which you might not have seen yet.

[allegro]

We're seeing those videos and additional news footage all day on television, here.


Edit: I guess this is being classified as an EF4, not an EF5.

As somebody who lived in the midwest with tornadoes my whole life, I could never understand these people who film these tornadoes. Totally nuts.

[DigitalChaos]

In non-tornado news....
The woman who was making and selling videos of herself torturing and killing animals get's off under protection of the 1st Amendment:
http://www.houstonpress.com/2013-05-...richards/full/

I hate to say it but the ruling is right. The prosecution should have gone after the act of animal torture/killing. Instead, they went after the creation of the video with a 2010 law focused on video creation. Recording a video should never be illegal but it can certainly be used as evidence against a crime committed. This is another example of "should have enforced existing laws instead of create redundant ones."
Is there anything stopping a new prosecution under animal cruelty charges? Better question is why the fuck didn't the DA take that route to being with...

[hollowed_point]

Such a tragic event.
I gotta ask .. Why? Why would anyone want to live in tornado alley?
Seems like such an unnecessary risk to take.

Would you go live at the base of a volcano that erupts every year?
I'm just saying, we tend as humans to fuck with nature. We build houses near rivers because of the scenery, but complain every year when our houses get flooded.

Yes, some area should remain uninhabitable. That's just how it is.

I asked the question to several people in my office. Not one single soul would go live there.

Pardon me for feeling slightly insulted, but are you serious? I get so sick and tired of people who have no clue what life is like in the Midwest (my area in particular, as we have a fairly high volume of tornadoes), people who act like we're all a bunch of bible thumping, redneck morons who aren't smart enough to know their ass from a hole in the ground. You talk like we're too fucking stupid to move out of Oklahoma, and by that logic, "You people had it coming!"

Allow me to answer your first question. When I was young, I hated it here. I've lived here my entire life, and I hated how "small town" everything felt. In my mind it was that L.A. and N.Y.C., coastal towns, etc, were the places where everyone with culture and style were from. Even Chicago seemed like a big improvement. I wanted to go to college at USC simply because it was by the beach, because I had been stuck in boring fucking Oklahoma my entire life and I wanted OUT.

As I've gotten older, I've realized how much I love it here. I've traveled now, seen more of the country, and I wouldn't live anywhere else. The country is beautiful. The people are, by and large, extremely friendly, and when tragedy strikes a family or a community, people rise to the occasion and give with a smile on their face and love in their heart. Most of the people who live here have very strong ties to this area through rich history. I personally have Native American heritage in my family, as do A LOT of people I know. We get more than our fair share of shit nationwide for being a "red" state, and yes, we have a long way to go on some of the social issues this country is strongly divided on, but I can guarantee that you could be an abortion supporting, Obama loving, super effeminate gay man and yet if you were a victim in this storm and your house, your life was destroyed, the community and it's individuals would surround you with support.

I choose to live in Oklahoma as an atheist, as a liberal, as someone who is WELL FUCKING AWARE THAT tornadoes may come any storm season, because I love it here, and I love (most) of the people even though I may not agree with them on everything, and the chances of your life being destroyed by a tornado are CERTAINLY MUCH less than dying in a car crash, eating bad chicken and dying from food poisoning, or being mauled by a wild animal and bleeding to death.

To say the area should remain uninhabited is just stupid.

[Dra508]

How do you double count the dead in the medical examiner's office. WTF.

[DigitalChaos]

With a 30min notice, why were so many people still in the path?

[hollowed_point]

How do you double count the dead in the medical examiner's office. WTF.

According to KOCO, "ALERT: State medical examiner's office: says 24 people were killed Monday. They have been identified. Spokeswoman Amy Elliott says multiple reports of the same victims and downed phone lines caused confusion leading to previously higher death tolls."

The confusion regarding the death tolls could most certainly been attributed to how absolutely chaotic the aftermath of this was. Phone lines within probably a 15 mile radius of that area were either barely functioning or dead, and cell phone reception was completely gone for a couple of hours. I couldn't contact anyone I knew for a while during and after the storm any way but by text message, and even that was spotty.

With a 30min notice, why were so many people still in the path?

This is a good question, and the best answer I can come up with is that people didn't know what path the storm would take or that the tornado would be as insane as it was. Under normal circumstances, we're told that we should take shelter either in a storm shelter or in a central room in our house with no windows. Also, I wouldn't say people had 30 full minutes with full awareness of the situation to make a decision to just "hang tight". According to weather.com,

2:40 p.m. CDT: A tornado warning was issued that included Moore, Okla.
2:52 p.m.: Radar indicates rotation may be reaching the ground near Moore
2:56 p.m.: First reports of a tornado in progress
3:01 p.m.: Tornado Emergency issued for Moore
3:36 p.m.: Tornado "ropes out" and dissipates


There comes a point when, under normal tornado circumstances, running is a BAD idea, and once the tornado hit the ground we had no idea how huge and devastating it was until the storm had dissipated and we could see just what happened. It's taken them a day to even figure out how strong to classify the tornado.

Oh, and the storm has now been classified as an EF-5.

"The National Weather Service says the tornado that hit Moore, Okla., was a top-of-the-scale EF-5 twister with winds of at least 200 mph."

[DigitalChaos]

According to KOCO, "ALERT: State medical examiner's office: says 24 people were killed Monday. They have been identified. Spokeswoman Amy Elliott says multiple reports of the same victims and downed phone lines caused confusion leading to previously higher death tolls."

The confusion regarding the death tolls could most certainly been attributed to how absolutely chaotic the aftermath of this was. Phone lines within probably a 15 mile radius of that area were either barely functioning or dead, and cell phone reception was completely gone for a couple of hours. I couldn't contact anyone I knew for a while during and after the storm any way but by text message, and even that was spotty.



This is a good question, and the best answer I can come up with is that people didn't know what path the storm would take or that the tornado would be as insane as it was. Under normal circumstances, we're told that we should take shelter either in a storm shelter or in a central room in our house with no windows. Also, I wouldn't say people had 30 full minutes with full awareness of the situation to make a decision to just "hang tight". According to weather.com,

2:40 p.m. CDT: A tornado warning was issued that included Moore, Okla.
2:52 p.m.: Radar indicates rotation may be reaching the ground near Moore
2:56 p.m.: First reports of a tornado in progress
3:01 p.m.: Tornado Emergency issued for Moore
3:36 p.m.: Tornado "ropes out" and dissipates


There comes a point when, under normal tornado circumstances, running is a BAD idea, and once the tornado hit the ground we had no idea how huge and devastating it was until the storm had dissipated and we could see just what happened. It's taken them a day to even figure out how strong to classify the tornado.

Oh, and the storm has now been classified as an EF-5.

"The National Weather Service says the tornado that hit Moore, Okla., was a top-of-the-scale EF-5 twister with winds of at least 200 mph."

16min before touchdown and 30min before it hit the main area. Seems it was specific enough for this person's cousin took it seriously and got 5miles away in that time.
http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience...-and-pictures/

[hollowed_point]

Evacuating everyone in that area would have taken longer than 30 minutes. The population density in that area is very high. I believe as many people got out of harms way as possible, and the weather forecasters and the NWS in Norman did a fantastic job. If they hadn't, the death count would have been MUCH higher. 24 dead for a tornado of this magnitude is amazing. The elementary school where the 7 children died had already evacuated nearly all of the students, but they ran out of time and had to bunker down and hope for the best. 7 children, while tragic as hell, is a small loss compared to the 300+ students there.

[jessamineny]

With a 30min notice, why were so many people still in the path?

You have to remember just how many tornado warnings a place like this gets. I grew up in the Midwest, and you hear soooo many tornado sirens that never materialize into anything that you stop feeling the urgency. And a lot of people think the media blows everything out of proportion, so they might not feel the urgency of those warnings either. Perhaps by the time some people realized how bad it really was, it was way too late to try to get away... especially since the beast was more than a mile wide.

[DigitalChaos]

You have to remember just how many tornado warnings a place like this gets. I grew up in the Midwest, and you hear soooo many tornado sirens that never materialize into anything that you stop feeling the urgency. And a lot of people think the media blows everything out of proportion, so they might not feel the urgency of those warnings either. Perhaps by the time some people realized how bad it really was, it was way too late to try to get away... especially since the beast was more than a mile wide.

That's how it was when I grew up in Wisconsin. However, we didn't see F4 and F5 tornados like Oklahoma. We would still stay locked to the weather coverage and close enough to shelter if anything came.

I remember the grocery store I worked at telling all the employees to go hide in the walk-in freezer while leaving all the customers wondering WTF was going on and why nobody was able to run the checkout lines for 20min. That was just awesome.

[DigitalChaos]

And yea, NWS saved a lot of lives. I'm just curious about those who didn't evacuate. It had to be asked after Katrina too. Is there something we could do better or did people neglect their own safety, basically.

[Dra508]

I can only imagine how conditioned you get to hearing those warnings, then nothing really happen.

When I was a kid, we had fire drills. Never had a fire
In the Midwest, they have tornado drills
Everywhere, they have lock down drills.

Best to be conditioned then to really not know what the fuck to do when something actually happens. Those airplane safety speeches, yeah, I pay attention and I'm a frequent flyer.

[DigitalChaos]

I can only imagine how conditioned you get to hearing those warnings, then nothing really happen.

When I was a kid, we had fire drills. Never had a fire
In the Midwest, they have tornado drills
Everywhere, they have lock down drills.

Best to be conditioned then to really not know what the fuck to do when something actually happens. Those airplane safety speeches, yeah, I pay attention and I'm a frequent flyer.

Eh, a drill is very different from a real warning/alert. You KNOW nothing will happen during a drill. The constant alerts where something might happen and never does it what kills it. That said, I believe there is some sort of risk indicator with the current tornado warnings, correct? Like, I think they specified that something massive could be happening instead of the smaller ones.

That said, there are also people who are just dumb and don't know what to do. Out here in San Francisco we had one of the yearly "drills" at noon where the whole company participates with the rest of the city as the alarms sound. Less than 3 hours later a real quake hit. The building starts shaking. Everyone stands up with the deer-in-headlights shock on their face while looking at eachother with the "what do we do?" look. That was the only earthquake I've ever laughed through. I'd like to imagine that there are very few people in OK like this though.

[jessamineny]

That's how it was when I grew up in Wisconsin. However, we didn't see F4 and F5 tornados like Oklahoma. We would still stay locked to the weather coverage and close enough to shelter if anything came.

I remember the grocery store I worked at telling all the employees to go hide in the walk-in freezer while leaving all the customers wondering WTF was going on and why nobody was able to run the checkout lines for 20min. That was just awesome.

You can get an idea of just how many more tornado watches and warnings the Oklahoma area gets than then Wisconsin area. I'd pay more attention, too, if I was warned only sporadically.

[sentient02970]

In the small 3 years I lived in Louisville we'd get tornado watches all the time and pay little attention. But that one time the klaxons went off for a warning one early morning we were racing to the basement.

[Dra508]

Basement, or cellars as the call em around here, seems very very optional in other parts of the country. Seems like built in shelter that would be useful in OK.

And that map, wow. Deep South has that many warnings because of hurricanes, so there's that too.

[allegro]

People in OK follow the warnings, they know where to go when the warnings go off, that's why there are so relatively FEW people dead from that OK twister. It wasn't like the town was standing around pointing, going "wow, look at that thing, what is it?" If that was true, you'd have thousands dead.

I took a meteorology class in college that included studying tornadoes, and we studied the statistics that showed that the number of deaths from tornadoes has decreased a LOT since the introduction of warning systems and even MORE since the invention of Doppler radar.

Now, we have Safe Rooms. I guess in Joplin, the number of safe rooms installed in houses increased a TON after that F5 hit. I saw a thing on the news about safe rooms tonight, the things can withstand a car being dropped on them without harm. The problem is, they ain't cheap. And FEMA says they can't subsidize it until AFTER a disaster hits. Wtf.

[Jinsai]

And yea, NWS saved a lot of lives. I'm just curious about those who didn't evacuate. It had to be asked after Katrina too. Is there something we could do better or did people neglect their own safety, basically.

With Katrina, lots of people just didn't understand the magnitude of what was coming their way (and couldn't anticipate (or didn't understand) the situation with the levees). Before Katrina, a lot of people would stay home and ride out the hurricanes.

[icklekitty]

I know! People just shouldn't live in natural disaster prone areas. It's just not safe. That's why I am moving to Detroit:

This is the map we should show to people who bang on about "God's will created AIDS to kill the gays"

[Deepvoid]

Credit Suisse expects the losses from the Moore tornado to be below $5 billion dollars.
Officials believe it will be higher than the $3 billion losses from the Joplin Tornado.

[mfte]

In non-tornado news....
The woman who was making and selling videos of herself torturing and killing animals get's off under protection of the 1st Amendment:
http://www.houstonpress.com/2013-05-...richards/full/

I hate to say it but the ruling is right. The prosecution should have gone after the act of animal torture/killing. Instead, they went after the creation of the video with a 2010 law focused on video creation. Recording a video should never be illegal but it can certainly be used as evidence against a crime committed. This is another example of "should have enforced existing laws instead of create redundant ones."
Is there anything stopping a new prosecution under animal cruelty charges? Better question is why the fuck didn't the DA take that route to being with...

Just horrible. Unfortunately justice has been served, although blindly.

Animal cruelty never sits right in my stomach. Perhaps some vigilante will serve her with something.