Bracing for a TWISTER

There is no Wizard of Oz at the end of most tornados.\n"Tornados are often overlooked and they can be very catastrophic," said Marilynn Mundy, crisis and disaster planner for IU's risk management office. "Personnel in each building act as an emergency control committee to ensure everyone is evacuated. If it's a fire alarm going off, hopefully students are willing to get out of their seats and leave the building along emergency evacuation routes."\nCampus community safety within each building is the responsibility of an emergency control committee coordinated through the office of risk management. Each building's ECC has developed a building emergency action plan in case of any natural or man-made disaster, which provides information on where to go and what to do in an emergency. \nMundy said evacuation routes are visibly posted throughout each building on campus and each emergency plan includes tornado shelters within each building. The ECC is comprised of volunteers, either salaried employees or hourly staff.\nAccording to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., about 60 people are killed each year from the more than 1,000 tornados occurring in all 50 states at all times of the year. Tornados are often formed when warm moist Gulf of Mexico air floating north collides with cold Canadian air drifting south and dry Rocky Mountain air wandering east. \nThe size of a tornado is not necessarily an indication of its intensity, according to the Tornado Project, a company that makes tornado information available to the United States. The vast majority of tornados are either weak or do minimal damage and only a small percentage of tornados can be correctly classified as violent. \n"If a tornado can hit Ellettsville or Martinsville, it can easily hit the campus," said Ken Long, director of risk management for IU. "Preparedness is the key. You can't wait for an emergency to happen to figure out what to do. You have to figure it out beforehand. Fire alarms go off regularly throughout the school year. They are sometimes false alarms but sometimes not."\nLong said campus community members should treat every alarm as if it were a real emergency, especially during tornado warnings and watches. A "tornado watch" issued by the SPC means a tornado is "possible" based on current weather conditions -- temperature, humidity and air flow. A "tornado warning" issued by the National Weather Service means a tornado has been spotted or Doppler radar indicates the storm is capable of producing tornado conditions.\nAccording to the Tornado Project, most tornado deaths occur in cars that are thrown and mobile homes that are obliterated. Most people killed by tornados have been blown sideways, with only a small vertical movement. "Sucked up" is not an accurate description of being caught in the air rushing toward the vortex -- centrifugal force throws things out. According to the Tornado Project, a human was thrown about a mile in a May 1, 1930, tornado in Kansas.\nLong said the office of risk management develops emergency action plans so campus community members can trust building personnel to lead them to safe environments to ride out potential tornado-producing storms.\n"If someone is in an Indiana University building, follow the directions of emergency personnel," he said. "The key to surviving all emergency situations is to determine what to do beforehand in case an emergency situation occurs. Panic creates chaos."\nAccording to the SPC, tornados can appear from any direction but most move from southwest to northeast. They move counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The SPC reports that tornados hit any particular square mile of land about every thousand years on average -- regardless of whether or not a tornado has hit that specific plot of land before. \n"There is the potential for massive death tolls if a stadium or fairground is hit by a \ntornado during a concert, festival or sporting event -- even with a warning in effect," according to the SPC Web site. \nMundy said it's important to look up the emergency plan of any building you spend a significant amount of time in throughout the school year or summer.\n"Look up the emergency action plan on the risk management Web site at www.indiana.edu/~riskmgmt/ or track down the building manager to become familiar with the emergency procedures," she said. "Most plans include all the names of building personnel who have received first aid and CPR training. Safety is something you have to talk about over and over again"