Being Prepared Saves Lives

Link to article

This article is about a new tornado early warning system.  How it works is not described, but it was able to give the citizens of the state it hit (Woodward, Oklahoma) two days of warning, as opposed to the usual, which was two hours.  They were able to get almost everybody to a shelter fairly quickly, and the casualties were far less than usual.  Many of the homes were destroyed, but the people were safe.  There were about thirty injuries, minor and serious, and five deaths, but compared to the norm, it's very low.  Closer inspection of past weather conditions also show that the frequent tornadoes that have been happening recently are not a new thing, simply a matter of the others in the past being unrecorded, or not quite as powerful.  The new early warning system does seem to work, though, and it will be thoroughly tested over the next few months.

I think this was written to show how much preparation can help.  "The predictions held, it seems. But the people listened," it says in the article.  People in states like Oklahoma and Kansas are used to tornadoes, and they would know first-hand how listening to warnings can save lives.  As it did here.  Being prepared can help with many things in every day life as well as with life threatening situations- it can help escape boredom, get better grades (in a student's case), or really just help along the way.  Obviously, in a situation like a natural disaster, being prepared is essential.    It can make a lot of difference how much warning there is, and seconds can count in times like that.  And knowing earlier did help a lot- the casualties and injuries were much smaller than usual.


I think the earlier warning is great.  If it saves people, of course it's a good thing.  I just wish they'd explained how it worked in the article.  I wonder how different it would have been back, say, a hundred years ago, if they had storm early warning systems, but not other modern technology.  Would they be able to escape the storms more easily?  Or would it not work that way, would they need something else (from modern times)to make it work?   Or, if they had had tanks and explosives in medieval times, would things have been different?  Would the war have been just the same?  And if they'd had tanks back then, where would we be in terms of weaponry now?  It's all very confusing to think about.