A national study by doctors at Rhode Island Hospital estimates U.S. hospitals' response to the Ebola crisis in 2014 cost, conservatively, some $360 million.
The study, published earlier this week in the journal "Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology", was authored by Dr. Michael A. Smit , a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and associate medical director of the Department of Epidemiology & Infection Control, and Dr. Leonard A. Mermel, an adult infectious diseases specialist and medical director of the Department of Epidemiology & Infection Control. The doctors collaborated with colleagues from The Joint Commission, University of Maryland Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Hospital on the study, "Ebola Preparedness Resources for Acute-Care Hospitals in the United States: A Cross-Sectional Study of Costs, Benefits, and Challenges."
The researchers analyzed the cost of supplies and staff overtime required for hospitals to prepare for the West African outbreak of the Ebola viral disease that threatened to become a global health crisis. The study also examined the challenges, benefits and perceived value of preparedness efforts.
Responses were collected from more than 200 hospitals in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
Significant findings include:
• Overall cost for acute care hospitals in the U.S. to prepare for possible Ebola viral disease cases: $361,108,968.
• The average amount spent by hospitals on supply and overtime labor costs: $80,461.
• Supply and staff costs ranged from $1,457 to $760,367. Adjusted for bed count, those costs were between $159 and $250,000 per 100 beds.
• Overtime cost in smaller hospitals was more than three times greater than larger hospitals.
• The leading challenge was difficulty obtaining supplies from vendors due to shortages.
• The greatest benefit cited was improved knowledge about personal protective equipment
"The financial impact of Ebola virus disease preparedness activities was substantial,'' Dr. Mermel said in a statement released by Rhode Island Hospital's health network, Lifespan. "The evidence makes a strong case that future emerging infectious disease identification, triage, and management should be conducted at the regional and national levels to facilitate efficient and appropriate allocation of resources in acute care
Cyber Terrorism
The Maine Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) bears a heavy burden when it comes to cyber. It’s responsible for the digital security of state and local government, and also works to ensure the cybersafety of the private sector. MEMA broadcasts a daily, color-coded cyberthreat update and is an integral partner in the state fusion center, the Maine Information and Analysis Center (MIAC).
All this is more than the agency can handle on its own. “I was fortunate to be able to create a new position a year ago — a cybersecurity coordinator — but he is also my continuity of operations officer. He’s responsible for business continuity and for disaster recovery planning,” said MEMA Director Bruce Fitzgerald. “There is absolutely no way he can do it all.”
The agency has found a way to lighten the load in recent months by teaming up with students from Thomas College. The Waterville, Maine, school has offered a degree in cyber since 2012 and was looking for a place where students could hone their skills in a practical environment.
About 20 students have been working with MEMA largely to help towns and cities around the state bring their municipal cyberpractices up to snuff. For the emergency management agency, municipal cyber-readiness could help to ease some of the pressure that has been building as the pace of cyberattacks nationwide continues to rise.
Force multiplier
Government clearly is in the crosshairs for cyberattackers. In a survey of 24 federal agencies released mid-2016, the General Accounting Office found that between 2006 and 2015 the number of cyberattacks on government climbed 1,300 percent — from 5,500 to over 77,000 a year.
Government IT executives are struggling in this environment. In a recent KPMG survey, 59 percent of federal cyberexecutives said their agencies struggle to understand how cyberattackers could breach their systems, and just 67 percent believe their agencies can appropriately respond to a cyberincident.
Bring this down to the municipal level, where resources are even more scarce, and the peril only becomes more pronounced.
“We have very small local government here in Maine. It may be a part-time clerk or an office that is only open a few days a week,” Fitzgerald said. “They don’t have the resources to address the emerging cybersecurity threat.”
After a rash of ransomware attacks locked multiple Maine police and sheriff's departments out of their records management systems, calls started coming into MEMA from towns seeking guidance. Fitzgerald needed a force multiplier to meet the demand and he turned to the college for help.
“It’s good for our students,” said professor of information technology management
Frank Appunn. “They get hands-on experience dealing with smaller and larger municipalities. They get to use their skills in the real world.”
New tools
The student team has delivered resources to help MEMA in its efforts to bring municipalities up to speed.
They have developed a brochure outlining basic cyberpractices and distributed it to some 700 municipalities. “It addresses backup, which is so important when towns are struggling with ransomware threats,” Appunn said. “We also looked at how to do wireless, because there are just so many things that can go wrong. And we talked about the user’s role, about having an acceptable use policy so that town workers and officials don’t do things that inadvertently open the door to the bad people.”
Last fall the students hosted a training session in person and online. The effort attracted about 60 officials from municipalities, utilities and others in the public realm. It offered a high-level overview of cyber best practices.
Now MEMA has its eye on a weekly help desk event, wherein students would work directly with municipalities to address pressing issues. “As we envision it, towns or police departments could either email in a question or call to get help. It’s a way to provide them with more of a technical resource than we could otherwise provide,” Fitzgerald said. “And they would be under the supervision of faculty, so it’s not like we are just turning college kids loose.”
In addition to the Thomas College effort, MEMA also collaborates with the Maine Cyber Security Cluster (MCSC), an academic and research center located on the Portland campus of the University of Southern Maine. Given the complex nature of a cyberthreat, Fitzgerald said he is eager to keep open as many lines of communication as possible.
“There is a wealth of information from the [Department of Homeland Security] and other sources, and we don’t want to duplicate something that is already available,” he said. “We want to make sure we aren’t setting up the colleges to be working in identical directions. We want them to complement each other and not step on each others’ toes.”
In addition to coordinating cyberefforts in the near term, MEMA’s ties to academia could help secure the state’s long-term digital security posture. “We hope these kids will come out of school and that they will want to stay in Maine. There is a huge need, and we just hope they won’t get whisked off to Boston or other places,” Fitzgerald said. He suggested that undergraduate encounters with FEMAand municipal leaders could encourage students to keep their talents close to home.
Diving deeper
Looking ahead, Appunn said students will be helping local leaders take their basic understanding of cyber to a deeper level.
“Now we are rolling out a couple of items a month where we dive deeper into a particular aspect of cyber,” he said. Students are producing white papers addressing detailed cyberimplementations and will be doing one-on-one outreach to municipal leaders.
“They will be going out to the towns to talk about what, specifically, the towns are seeing and what they can do about it. We want to talk about how they can protect their networks and protect their citizens,” he said.
This could enable MEMA to make best use of its limited cyberassets. “It provides feedback to us about what the common questions are, what the common issues are that people are reporting,” Fitzgerald said. “That in turn helps us target our resources.”
What Happens on Campus During an Emergency
Essential personnel are needed to ensure critical functions continue after an emergency. The real question is: Who is considered essential and who decides who is essential on a college campus? Everyone has been through the drill where an executive committee, emergency preparedness working group or perhaps even the human resource office generates a long list of the people on campus who are considered essential, but a question remains: Do these people have the skills and abilities to make sure the campus continues to operate after an emergency? And once the campus is closed, will the people identified as essential actually remain or return to campus?
FEMA doesn’t regularly use the term “essential personnel,” but includes “human capital” as one of the elements of a viable continuity capability. Human capital is defined as emergency employees and other special categories of employees who are activated by an agency to perform assigned response duties during an event where continuity is at stake.
Columbia University defines essential personnel as the faculty and staff who are required to report to their designated work location and to ensure the operation of essential functions or departments during an emergency or when the university has suspended operations.
Rather than develop a generic list of essential employees, universities will have more success after an emergency of maintaining critical functions by basing their plan on the emergency itself. Simply, who must continue to work based on the campus closures? Again, even when discussing campus specific emergencies, the various departments must first identify their critical functions before the essential employees can be established. These three specific closures and subsequent essential employees are simply a starting point and an example of what must be modified based on each campus’ essential functions, organization, interdependent variables and geographic location.
Universities’ Continuity of Operations Plans should address each potential hazard and include the specific list of essential employees to manage the aftermath to keep the institution in business. Public health, power outage and winter weather are just three examples.
Public Health
Public health emergencies have the potential to impact every single department on a campus. Universities must decide what basic functions must continue to operate on the physical campus, such as law enforcement, housing functions and dining services, and what essential functions can be done remotely, like purchasing, information technology and teaching. During a public health emergency, isolation and separation are vital to the health of the community. Emergency planners should assist departments with determining how they can continue their functions from home and how to potentially operate at a reduced level. Continuity planning for public health scenarios should also take into consideration that the event may last for an extended period and that mutual aid resources are probably going to be overwhelmed. Deferrable functions may need to cease until the crisis is over, and there may also be a need to reallocate human capital resources to maintain only those critical one- and two-level functions on campus.
Likely essential personnel to deal with the lingering effects of a public health emergency, possible campus disruption and even perhaps closure, include:
• Health services personnel (doctors, nurses, etc.)
• Public safety (police, emergency management)
• Environmental health and safety
• Information technology, especially if distance learning options are available
• Public/media relations
• Housing
• Dean of students
Campuswide Power Outage
Outages can be caused by human error, equipment failure, severe weather or even traffic accidents. If this happens, these two questions will almost immediately be asked by the faculty, staff and student body: How long will it be before it is restored, and can we go home? Although emergency management cannot initially answer these questions, they can certainly begin to coordinate the response and recovery efforts with other essential personnel and departments. The duties and functions are critical from these members of facilities, environmental health and safety, public safety, and information technology as this incident is unfolding.
Facilities staff must continuously monitor and confirm that all the generators are maintaining the building’s life safety systems and emergency lighting. Depending on the time of day, this may present a problem for the occupants in the building. The outage may cause elevator entrapments, fire alarms and other devices to activate, creating a panic for some as the unknown is magnifying.
Environmental health and safety staff should make contact with those labs that have been pre-identified as hazardous and get a current status from each principal investigator so as to perform a safety check of every researcher. In addition, an update should be noted if there has been any damage to sensitive equipment or experiments.
Public safety will be bombarded with phone calls into the dispatch center to report the outage and with other incidents. The center will quickly have to juggle many duties with a limited number of dispatchers. The previous-mentioned alarms, traffic light outages and accidents will surely keep them busy, especially assigning police officers to assist with these service calls and any building evacuations.
Information technology will administer business continuity plans that have been laid out for these types of situations. As the crux of any university operation, they have to ensure that all of the servers are working on the uninterrupted power supply systems and no data has been lost. An institution’s phone system and other network services could be impacted.
As with any other incident, there is usually an emergency within an emergency. Murphy’s Law will always rear its ugly head with generators and other backup systems failing at the wrong time, but the essential personnel members will have to respond with plans B and C. The impact in the end will be minimal because of their actions, training and experience.
Winter Weather
Regardless of where a campus is located, snow storms may dump unusually large amounts of snow. Ice or freezing rain may make roads too slick to navigate, and driving winds may create white-out conditions or exacerbate already dangerously low temperatures. To further complicate matters, local or state governments may impose travel restrictions or declare states of emergency that compel universities to suspend operations.
In most cases, activity on campus will significantly diminish, alleviating the need for many of the day-to-day operations. Functions that must continue are largely focused on ensuring the safety, security and comfort of the campus community and preparing to resume normal operations once the weather improves. Perhaps unique to this circumstance, the need for performing essential functions, and the people to support them, must be balanced with their safety in getting to campus.
Given the above considerations, examples of critical functions broadly include:
1. Provide utilities (power, water, heat): operate the on-campus power plant/distribution facility and monitor critical building systems.
• Utilities department senior management
• Power plant operations and maintenance staff
• Building control technicians
2. Prepare and serve meals to students: provide sustenance to campus residents.
• Dining hall manager
• Production manager
• Cook
• Food preparation staff
3. Maintain a safe and secure campus: respond to calls for service; assure life and property safety; provide non-transport medical response, conduct patrols; direct emergency response resources; provide medical care to students.
• Dispatch center personnel
• Shift captain/fire fighters
• Sworn and non-sworn officers
• Health Center nurses
4. Remove snow from primary roadways: maintain campus accessibility, prepare for re-opening.
• Director of landscape services
• Landscape service personnel
5. Maintain data center operations: ensure uninterrupted network; data; and application services.
• Director of IT services
• Service technicians
6. Protect (research) animal life: maintain animal living environment, ensure adequate food and water.
• Facility director/associate director
• Facility manager
• Animal technicians
• Facility veterinarian (on-call)
Recovery efforts/continuity of operations is the most difficult phase of the emergency management process. It is a phase that often receives the least amount of planning and resources. An important part of the recovery process must be to identify essential employees, but should be done so based on the emergency and the essential functions that must be continue. It’s also worth noting that, regardless of the plan, it will likely need to be modified based on additional and unforeseen circumstances — including, essential employees. Finally, the geographical location and mission of a university also plays an important part in determining essential employees, and consequently an important reason why one university may have a different list of essential employees and cannot simply rely on another university’s list.
Who Comes Back After A Disaster
When a community endures catastrophic damage, residents must evacuate. One of the hallmarks of a resilient community is that most of the residents come back. But what we don’t know is who will or won’t return. While I don’t have the answer let me illuminate the question a bit, if only so those of you smarter than me can see it more clearly.
It is well-established that many did not return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Currently the population of the city is about 80% of what it was pre-Katrina. The median household income has jumped and school performance has also improved. Income inequality was, and is, quite high, however (the ratio of median household incomes at the 95% to the 20% level now > 11). A huge proportion of the population (>20%) still live in poverty 12 years after Katrina. Prior to Katrina unemployment levels of the poorest were as high as 30%.
Contrast this with Christchurch in New Zealand which experienced devastating earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 (the quake last November was several tens of kilometers north and east of the city and did little damage to Christchurch itself). Its population is very nearly the same as before the quakes (and about the same as NOLA’s). While income disparities exist, they were and are much less stark than NOLA’s. When I drove through the city last September, I was struck by how normal everything seemed (with the exception of the cathedral – the Church and the government can’t seem to agree about what to do with it), in contrast to the blocks of boarded-up houses in New Orleans. While unemployment among the poor is higher than the average, it is dwarfed by the unemployment of the poor in New Orleans.
If we measure a community’s resilience in terms of either time to reach normalcy or how close to normalcy it has reached in a given time, I am forced to say that Christchurch was (and probably still is) more resilient than New Orleans. But that still begs the questions of who didn’t come back to New Orleans.
If we look at New Orleans now vs 2005, it’s less black and more Hispanic and white. The average size of the family has decreased about 10%, indicating that children make up less of the population than before. Almost all of the boarded up properties are in the poorer sections of the city. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the poor and the black and families with children make up a higher proportion of those who haven’t come back compared to their proportion in the city’s population in 2005. But why?
I don’t know, but I have a guess hypothesis. As Kristofferson’s lyric implies, those who have weak ties to the community were the ones who didn’t come back. No job – why come back? A house that was destroyed – why come back? Schools that were doing a poor job of educating your kids – why come back? Mired in intergenerational poverty – why come back to that?
If I’m right, this has profound implications for what might happen to cities such as Memphis or Los Angeles or even Houston when the inevitable disaster hits. As I’ve noted before, too often we think of communities as closed systems, and residents as statistics. Resilience is then seen as a numbers game in which we look at some metrics and evaluate whether the community is as functional as before. But communities are open systems, and residents aren’t statistics but people acting in what they believe to be their best interests. I advance this hypothesis not because it’s right but rather to goad the research community to replace it with a better one. Who will leave, who will come back – important for understanding community resilience.
Hurricane Season for 2017
Here's some welcome news for most Floridians: The upcoming hurricane season could be slightly below average.
In fact, we could see as few as four hurricanes.
An early forecast from scientists at Colorado State University's (CSU) Tropical Meteorology Project concluded that a weak or moderate El Niño is likely by the height of the Atlantic hurricane season, along with cooling temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and the North Atlantic Ocean. An El Niño weather pattern generally results in fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, as it increases wind shear — strong winds that can break up hurricanes as they're forming.
These factors prompted scientists to forecast 11 named storms — four of them intensifying into hurricanes, including two that are major hurricanes with winds topping 110 mph.
"If you have El Niño, it kind of drives the bus," said Philip Klotzbach, the co-author on the report. "If you don't have El Niño, then you have to start looking at other factors."
Still, Klotzbach warned that an El Niño pattern is not a guarantee that Floridians will emerge from the hurricane season unscathed. In fact, Category 5 Hurricane Andrew struck in an El Niño year, which Klotzbach said partially occurred because the storm began in the deep tropics.
"You can still certainly have a major hurricane in the deep tropics in an El Niño year, but odds are reduced," Klotzbach said.
On average, there are 12 named storms, defined as systems with sustained winds between 39 mph and 73 mph, with 6.5 of of them becoming hurricanes, two of them major, meaning a Category 3, 4 or 5 storm.
There is a 42 percent probability of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coast this season, compared with the average of 52 percent. But there is a 24 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast, 6 percent more than the last century's average of 30 percent, according to the report.
Although experts always caution that early forecasts can turn out to be inaccurate, the CSU report, co-penned this year by Klotzbach and Michael Bell in the school's Atmospheric Science Department, has a fairly high correct-early-prediction rate of 80 percent: 28 out of 35 of the anticipated below- or above-average seasons have developed as predicted, the report said.
The private weather forecasting service AccuWeather released its early forecast Wednesday and also predicted a below-average season with slightly differing numbers, anticipating 10 named storms, five hurricanes and three major hurricanes. AccuWeather factored the El Niño into those reports, combined with warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
Last year's hurricane season ended the record 10-year period without a hurricane making landfall in Florida, with Hurricane Hermine striking north Florida in early September. Hurricane Matthew didn't land in Florida, but caused significant damage as it skirted the state's east coast in early October. In total, 2016 saw 15 named storms, including seven hurricanes, three of them major.
Matthew and Hermine also caused considerable economic damage for the state at around $1.6 billion, reported in December 2016. That amount was the highest for natural disasters since the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, according to Division of Energy Management Director Bryan Koon.
Last year was fairly consistent, if a little bit higher, with Klotzbach's predictions for the season. The early 2016 forecast projected 12 named storms, five of which would be hurricanes. Of those five, two would be major storms. He also noted a 50 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. coast.
Hurricane season begins June 1 and continues through Nov. 30. The months of August, September and October generally see the highest hurricane activity.
Despite the below-average prediction, experts urged residents to remember that even a single hurricane can have a large impact.
"It takes only one storm near you to make this an active season," Bell said in a press release.
Federal forecasters will issue their prediction for the coming season next month.
Specialized Live Fire Training
The Thibodaux, La., Volunteer Fire Department firefighters last week received specialized training to better handle fire scenes.
The department joined the St. John, District 1 and 308 fire departments to receive training to instruct firefighters who are using a live-fire training unit.
A new specialized training unit, which was delivered to the Thibodaux Volunteer Department Training Center earlier this month, exposes firefighters to live fire conditions with temperatures in excess of 1,200 degrees, Thibodaux Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Benton Foret said.
"We've been looking for ways to improve the knowledge base of our members," Foret said. "Up until we had this opportunity, we had to work with LSU on what is called flashover training, which is an opportunity to put members in the environment that they would expect inside a burning building in a controlled environment."
The $55,000 unit, which the department purchased using a grant from the Lorio Foundation, includes a burn chamber and a student and instructor area, where student firefighters observe fire behavior and learn to read and interpret conditions in a structure that is fully engulfed in fire, Foret said.
Foret said the new unit exposes training firefighters to realistic situations they could encounter in an interior blaze and how to recognize the different stages of such fires.
"The purpose in using this new unit is to teach firefighters the early warning signs of hazardous, impending flashover conditions that firefighters cannot survive even in firefighting gear so they will know how to manage the conditions or know when it is time to get out of the affected area," Foret said.
Wood and other combustible materials are strategically placed in a burn chamber and lit by an instructor. The strategic placement of these materials and subsequent lighting of the materials intentionally generates fire conditions that firefighters must be able to recognize and identify as highly hazardous conditions to interior firefighting operations, Foret said.
The student and instructor area allows training firefighters to experience live fire, smoke and heat conditions they will encounter during a response to a real-life blaze.
Foret said until now the department didn't have the ability to conduct this kind of training due to the requirement of specialized equipment and training to generate such high-heat conditions.
"We have a state-of-the-art facility, but one thing we didn't have was a flashover unit," he said. "The Thibodaux Volunteer Fire Department is pleased with the results of the unit and training it has allowed the department to undertake thus far."
Firefighters were instructed by On Scene Training Associates LLC, which consists of the most experienced and respected fire and emergency service instructors in the country, Foret said.
"All of the On Scene instructors are firefighters and carry state instructor credentials, and many are nationally registered with Pro Boards, the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress and the American Society of Home Inspectors," he said. "We'll also be able to host and share this information with regional departments as well."
Foret said On Scene Training has instructed in almost every state in the country as well as U.S. territories and several foreign countries, and many of the company's instructors are staff members of the Fire Department Instructor's Conference, FDIC East, Firehouse World, Firehouse Expo, Firehouse Central and several other regional and local conferences.
"The addition of this new unit and specialized training is an example of the commitment the Thibodaux Volunteer Fire Department has made in providing our members with the best equipment and knowledge to equip our firefighters to best serve the public," Foret said.
Be Weather Aware
Oklahomans know tornadoes can be deadly, but we may not always know how to protect ourselves.
In 2013, 24 people lost their lives when an EF-5 tornado hit Moore a day after another tornado destroyed multiple homes in east Norman. The risk of severe weather events such as large hail, tornadoes and flooding are higher in April and May, said National Weather Service meteorologist Wayne Ruff, meaning residents should be especially aware of weather.
“Pay attention to the weather forecasts, not only for today, but for the next two or three days so you can prepare,” Ruff said. “On any given day where there is a forecast for severe weather, think about changing plans that would put you at risk.
"Early warnings are mostly for people who pay attention. If you don't know there's a possibility of a threat, it's more difficult to respond to a warning.”
Between 1950 to 2014, 1,414 tornados occurred in Oklahoma during May, the most tornado-prone month in Oklahoma, according to the National Weather Service. The May 20, 2013, tornado was up to 1.3 miles wide and was on the ground for 39 minutes, tearing a 17-mile path of destruction from Newcastle to Moore.
Watching local weather forecasts and paying attention to National Weather Service warnings on social media and other sites can provide an opportunity to take shelter. In case of a power outage, a weather radio with battery backup is essential, particularly in rural areas where cell phone coverage may be spotty.
“People have to select a methodology of gathering information and follow it,” Norman’s emergency management coordinator David Grizzle said.
• Siren speak and sheltering in place: Despite our intimate and sometimes deadly experience with twisters, Cleveland County residents can be unfamiliar with city policies regarding tornado sirens and shelters.
Norman has 68 and Moore has 38 warning sirens, but people may rely too heavily on the city's sirens or may misinterpret what those sirens mean.
First and foremost, Grizzle wants residents to know sirens are outdoor warning systems designed to alert people who are outside. A person inside a home, business or other structure may not hear a siren.
“Newer construction homes are typically built to suppress outside traffic and neighbor noises. Unfortunately, the sirens are suppressed, as well,” the city of Moore website warns. “Add in the typical sounds of televisions, computers, game systems, radios and just normal conversation, and it may be unlikely that a siren could be heard indoors.”
Norman and Moore follow the same regional siren policy. A siren means "take cover." Norman and Moore do not sound an “all clear” siren, so any siren means “take cover,” even if it's the second or third siren of the day. Sirens sound for three minutes.
“The amount of lead time we get from the National Weather Service for the decision-making process is usually 10 to 15 minutes when they issue a tornado warning,” Grizzle said. If a siren is sounded too early, people may leave shelter before it is safe.
Tornado sirens are sounded in Norman and Moore when there is an “imminent direct threat.”
“We do not want to cry wolf,” Grizzle said.
• What determines whether sirens are sounded? “The direction and path of the storm determines which sirens are sounded. Where is the imminent threat?” Grizzle said. “You have to analyze that data, and you have to do it rapidly.”
When the decision is made to sound sirens, do they sound in all parts of Norman?
“We have the ability to zone the sirens,” Grizzle said. “We have preplanned all these zones. Predominantly, we have either an east zone or a west zone, with the dividing line being East 60th Avenue.”
Norman and Moore test sirens at noon every Saturday, except when the possibility of severe weather is present or when special events are planned.
Norman encourages sheltering in place rather than traveling a distance to a shelter. Usually moving to the lowest level of a home or office in an interior room with no windows, such as a closet or restroom, is the best idea if there isn't a nearby storm shelter.
“Sometimes people wait too late to go to a shelter and put their families at risk,” Grizzle said. “Sheltering in place is simply utilizing the shelter you're in and selecting the best place to shelter.”
People are encouraged to create a plan for taking shelter and stay weather aware on high-risk days.
“Too often, families wait for the outdoor warning sirens to sound before enacting their plan, but by then, it can be too late to properly react to conditions,” Norman Fire Chief and Emergency Manager Travis King said. “It is critically important for residents to have an emergency plan in place and to stay aware of changing weather.”
Most tornado deaths occur in cars and mobile homes. Moore recommends finding a substantial structure or designated tornado shelter, if possible.
“If in your car, remember that highway bridges are not designed as tornado shelters and make for very poor shelter,” according to the Moore website.
Residents who have shelters can register them to help emergency responders find them in the case the exit is covered by debris.