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You are at: NWS Home » SRH Home » SR News » 2004 » Alert Citizen Heeds Early NWS Tornado Warning
Alert Citizen Heeds Early NWS Tornado Warning and Saves Family
Whitaker safe room (Photo: WFO Jackson WCM Jim Butch) |
For Gene Whitaker and his wife Girthel, it was "déjà vu all over again" as a powerful F2 tornado bore down on their Lowndes County, Miss. home during the early morning hours of December 7, 2004. It was almost two years to the day when they huddled, terrified as another tornado tore at their home during the deadly Veterans Day Tornado Outbreak of 2002.
This time, he was more than ready. When the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Jackson issued a Tornado Warning at 3:41 a.m., he would have 14 minutes until touchdown. Acting quickly, he moved his wife to a new safe house in a storage shed behind their home. He then called his pregnant granddaughter Stacy and her husband Randy McIntosh who lived in a mobile home nearby.
Soon, all four were sitting quietly in the safe room listening to the devastation occurring around them. They heard the recognizable roaring sound as the tornado ripped at the building. Then, all was quiet. They exited the safe room only to see trees and debris were scattered everywhere. The mobile home where Randy and Stacy had been sleeping earlier -- was literally gone. All four emerged with out a scratch.
Whitaker's safe room is a four by eight solid concrete room with a metal door constructed within a storage building located about fifteen yards behind his house. When it was finished, Whitaker hoped he would never have to use it, but he felt more secure knowing it was there if he needed it.
Following their harrowing experience two years earlier, Whitaker became aware of a program by the State of Mississippi that offered mitigation grants and assistance in building safe rooms. Since 2001, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency used $4 million in federal grants to help build nearly 1,800 storm shelters or safe rooms - with more than 400 of them in Lowndes County. For more information on the program, visit http://www.msema.org/mitigate/mssaferoomfaq.htm.
Site of Randy McIntosh's mobile home (Photo: WFO Jackson WCM Jim Butch) |
"Whitaker is a living example of how people can take positive steps to protect themselves from nature's powerful storms," said Jim Butch, warning coordination meteorologist at the Warning Forecast Office (WFO) in Jackson. "He did everything right. He had a preparedness plan. He took the effort to provide his family with a safe place to go when the weather threatened. He knew how to receive severe weather information and he knew what he should do when severe weather approached."
WFO Jackson Meteorologist-in-Charge Alan Gerard agrees, "Thanks to Whitaker's efforts, his granddaughter, her husband and their unborn child are alive today. We'll never stop severe weather, but this shows what people can do to protect themselves."
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