Thunder and Lightning and Wind, Oh My!

7-25-01 – So yesterday was a fairly boring day. Extremely hot, and terribly humid, it was worse than a sauna outside. When it started to rain, it was very welcome. Of course, it was still hot, and the rain felt like it was from an overly warm bathtub. With my keen interest in weather, I kept checking various weather info sites, expecting watches to be issued. No dice.

When the skies started getting a little ominous, we turned on the TV up here, and kept the radar screen up on my computer. Still nothing.

Then we started watching the sky from room 434, and watched this incredible gust front go through. It was beautiful.

It finally started to rain. Then the wind picked up. The rain was lashing against the windows pretty hard. I wandered down to the east part of the atrium, where it was really dark, then stood in the atrium and talked to some students a bit. After a little while, it was raining so hard that it looked like a solid sheet of white out the atrium sides. I could see the trees just barely, and when I walked a little closer, I could see that the wind was blowing even more furiously. I went back to 434 and told Chris that he should see this. As I walked to the west end of the atrium, I could feel the building shaking just a little, and could see the wind just whipping around the trees. Chris and I decided that maybe we should get the students out of the labs (north walls are all windows), and into a more sheltered area. As we moved back to the labs fairly quickly, the fire alarms went off. We were able to grab the door before it slammed shut, and started telling people to take shelter in the faculty hallway, and to get to the stairwell.

While the labs were not particularly crowded, there were a surprising number of students still working. We had a lot of people who scrambled to save their documents and grab their disks before they would leave the labs. We also had a lot of people who just didn't know what to do, and couldn't hear me over the alarms. We did manage to get everyone to the basement in a short amount of time, with a few little quirks along the way. We joined a fairly large group of students, faculty, and staff, and we all speculated about what was going on outside.

Then we heard the fire trucks approaching.

Pretty soon the news came that it was, indeed, a fire alarm, and that we had to evacuate the building. Yes, evacuate the building in the pouring rain, and who knows what else. Luckily, it had let up a bit, so we stood outside under the south overhang and waited for the alarms to stop.

As we all filed back into the building, the main topic of conversation dwelt on the fact that hardly anyone knew what to do in case of a weather or fire related emergency. Once back in the labs, I had e-mail from a local news station that we had simply had a severe thunderstorm warning, and that Ames had had reports of 60 — 70 mph winds, and there were trees down all over. We were extremely lucky.

So, after a fire alarm, and a weather emergency, and after trying to make myself heard over huge winds and blaring alarms, I have decided to give a few helpful hints on what to do in either case. If everyone had an idea of what to do, we could evacuate, or seek shelter a lot faster. Here goes:

Fire

If the fire alarms go off, everyone MUST evacuate the building immediately. Go to the nearest stairwell and proceed to the outside exits. Do not run, but do walk fairly quickly (think "Olympic power-walk" as opposed to "relaxed, classes-are-over-for-the-day walk"). Please leave the labs as quickly as possible as soon as you hear the alarms. If I have to come shoo people out, we are wasting time. Yes, it may be only a false alarm, but it may be a fire where every second counts. Don't bother even saving your files. If it is a false alarm, we will be back in a couple of minutes. If it is a real fire, we may not have labs to come back to, in which case, saving won't help if the computer is toasted.

Weather Emergency

A weather emergency is harder to respond to than a fire alarm. No one wants to act scared or concerned around fellow students. This does not make the danger any less real. The university has outdoor warning sirens that sound when a warning has been issued. However, there are several reasons why you should not rely entirely on these sirens.

1. Sometimes, a warning may not be issued until the storm is already in the area.

2. We cannot hear the sirens in the labs. I have only heard one test, and it was on a day when no one was in the labs and every piece of equipment was off.

In addition, there is no building warning system that can be activated in case of a warning. It is up to the faculty and staff to pay attention to weather warnings and to get others warned. I get warnings through e-mail, try to have the television on, and check a semi-live radar screen from the web. If there is a warning issued for our area, I will tell people to take shelter. If I am not here, the lab monitors will issue the warning.

So, what do you do if there is a weather warning?

1. Take it seriously, folks. It takes several minutes to get from the labs to the basement. A certain amount of humor is fine, as long as you are already on your way out the door and down the hall. Every second may count.

2. Don't worry about saving your documents. If you have been saving like you are supposed to, you shouldn't lose too much work if the power goes out, and if we do have damage in the labs, you may not be able to get to your saved work anyway.

3. Move quickly to the stairwell by going through the space in front of the elevators and through the faculty hallway. Do not use the center, unprotected stairwell (the atrium is glass, people). If you can't get to the stairwell in time, the hallway will offer some protection, and you may be able to get to the restroom to take shelter.

4. Straight-line winds can cause damage to a building. Even if there is not a tornado, strong winds, such as we had yesterday, can wreak havoc on a building with as much glass as we have. One of our staff members said that she saw the glass of the west atrium wall bulging in from the force of the wind. If I feel that there is a certain amount of danger due to high winds, like yesterday, the decision will be made to have people move to a safer part of the floor until the winds die down. This is the action I had intended to take yesterday before the fire alarms sounded. In this case, moving to the faculty hallway would be sufficient.

So, let's go over this again. If there is a fire, you do what? Yes, evacuate the building immediately. If there is a weather warning, you what? Yes, seek shelter in the faculty hallway; go to the stairwell and down to the basement. Very good answers! You all get an "A"!

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Everyone did a great job during our combined tornado/fire alarm yesterday, once we got people headed in the right direction. I'd like to thank everyone for listening, and you may now return to your regularly scheduled program.

-J

Jennifer Nieland is the lab coordinator for the College of the Design student computer labs. Man, I sure feel sorry for whoever's car was under that big tree branch in the staff parking lot. Ouch!