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Responding To The Sept. 6 Tornado Activity

An interview with Kyle Cavanaugh, emergency coordinator/vice president for administration

This photo from Ed Geercken, Ham radio operator W4EJG, was taken at 9:33 a.m. Sept. 6 at the Brown Water Treatment Plant on Infinity Road in Northern Durham County. Several witnesses reported seeing a rotating cloud or funnel cloud, but a touchdown could
This photo from Ed Geercken, Ham radio operator W4EJG, was taken at 9:33 a.m. Sept. 6 at the Brown Water Treatment Plant on Infinity Road in Northern Durham County. Several witnesses reported seeing a rotating cloud or funnel cloud, but a touchdown could not be confirmed. No obvious tornado damage was observed. Photo courtesy of National Weather Service, Raleigh.

The weather Tuesday,
Sept. 6, was anything but typical. Tropical Storm Lee's remnants were moving
through the South, spawning storm bands and just the right ingredients for
tornadoes to occur in the Triangle area.

"They're very small, and
they're very quick," said Ryan Ellis, meteorologist with the National Weather
Service in Raleigh. "They spin up, and then, they go away."

Before sunrise Tuesday,
the weather service in Raleigh issued its first in a series of nine tornado
warnings for the region that day - and two of those were for northern Durham
County.

And all the while, police
and emergency officials at Duke were talking with forecasters, studying radar
for rotation in the air and assessing how and when to notify students, staff
and faculty.

This week, Working@Duke
interviewed Kyle Cavanaugh, Duke's emergency coordinator and vice president for
administration, about Duke's management and response to the severe weather.

How was Duke
monitoring the weather patterns last Tuesday?

We have a number of individuals
who, on a 24/7 basis, are monitoring what's developing with the weather. We are
typically several days ahead of emerging weather patterns. Last week, we were
monitoring conditions the day before, on Monday, as the system was making its
way through the southern states. We monitored it through the National Weather
Service and also a weather-monitoring organization that provides us with
advanced alerts and very specific local information. With severe weather, we
have people monitoring the radar for our specific area, and we're in close
coordination with weather experts and Duke leadership.

Take us through the
decisions, and how we notified the Duke community about the potential for
tornadoes.

By 5:17 a.m., we received
news of the first tornado watch for all of Durham County. A tornado watch means
there's a small chance that isolated
tornadoes could form. After consulting with our chief of police and other
emergency management leaders, we set into motion a series of communications to let
students, staff and faculty know that we had the possibility for tornadoes
during the course of the next several hours.

Kyle Cavanaugh, Emergency Coordinator and Vice President for Administration

Kyle Cavanaugh, Emergency Coordinator and Vice President for Administration

We posted a story on Duke Today at
around 7:30 a.m., and I sent updates to our emergency team leaders across the
university and health system to just
let them know this activity was out there.
Because of the erratic patterns we
were seeing, we also activated an
alert bar across Duke's main websites, linking to updates on Duke Today, and
that worked well. That was the main
way we let the community know what was going on and that we'd be monitoring the
storm minute by minute. Later in the morning, the
first tornado warning was issued for northern Durham County. Remember, a
warning typically means a tornado has been sighted or indicated by weather
radar. As we were preparing to send the text message and email alerts, the
warning was discontinued. But given this escalation, we thought it appropriate
to go ahead and use the DukeALERT mass notification system to send a text
message and email to students, staff and faculty, although this storm
disappeared very quickly.

In the afternoon, another
tornado warning was issued for northern Durham County, and we sent another
round of text messages and email to alert the community - even though the
system was not headed toward campus. Again, out of a sense of caution, we
wanted to let people know we were monitoring the situation and they should be
aware of it. When the warning was canceled later that afternoon, we sent the "all clear" by text and email.  

Why weren't the
outdoor warning sirens activated?
 

We only use the sirens
for an imminent threat. While the tornado warnings were issued for northern
Durham County, the intense storm cells did not have a trajectory of coming anywhere
near campus, so there was not a need to initiate the sirens. The warnings were
coming up, then down, and the last warning for northern Durham County noted
that radar indicated
a tornado over Hillsborough moving north. The warnings never stayed up as an elevated risk and didn't
warrant the need for us to activate the siren. We were watching very carefully
and, fortunately, our notification system gave us the flexibility to choose the
most appropriate tools to respond to the situation.

What lessons have we
learned from Tuesday's events?
 

We watched organizations
very close to us and observed a range of responses. Some of them hit the sirens
while others didn't even send any text alerts. It's always a delicate balance between
warning the community of a potential threat and creating undue alarm if the
threat doesn't manifest. What we were watching in this case was a very erratic
storm pattern. The National Weather Service put out two warnings indicating
tornadoes, and on the following day it said there were no confirmed tornadoes
in Durham. So that's an indication of how volatile and how unpredictable some
of this was.

The biggest thing we need
to improve upon is educating our community on what exactly to do if we do have
tornadic activity. We had certain parts of the campus that responded well in
terms of moving away from windows and taking shelter. And then there were some
who were not as organized. We have some work to do, building by building, to identify
where people should go and what they should do.

As we continue to refine
our practices and our tools, the community will continue to see ongoing communication
regarding what individuals and departments need to do to ensure the safest
possible environment at Duke.