The 'Eagle Times' Student Newspaper: News

Application makes perfect

Tornado warning put into effect

By Shelby Brokaw

May 07, 2007

Kansas is known for tornadoes, but what happened on May Day was not a regular occurrence. Directly after school was dismissed, the high school office received a call from the Silver Lake police department informing them that a tornado warning was going into effect and to get everyone to shelter. Debbie Doebele, high school secretary, immediately announced this information over the intercom, and a minute later the town's sirens went off.

Events occurred much the same way at the grade school.

"When the sirens went off, we had a first group of kids who had already headed out the door. So we went out and around and brought them back into the building and made the announcement over the intercom to get to the tornado shelters. Of course that goes to both buildings, so the preschool and kindergartners, they stayed over in their building at that time," said Ronda Dewey, principal of the elementary school.

The timing of the tornado caused certain setbacks in the plans set up for a tornado warning. Because the warning occurred after the dismissal of the elementary, junior high and high schools, what was practiced in the drills wasn't exactly what happened.

Larry Winter, principal of the high school, explained.

"Well, you can't plan for an emergency, but the fact that it occurred after we had already dismissed sort of created some problems. During a drill, we like to assign kids to a room, and here we just said 'go to a room.' So it made it a little difficult to know who was where, as far as becoming accountable for everybody. We'll have to try to look a little bit at that, see if there's a good way to figure out who's in what room," he said.

Another difference between a drill and actual application at the high school was the absence of an in-school tornado alarm. Though this baffled certain students, it was made up for by the announcement over the intercom and Silver Lake's town-wide alarm.

The only other aspect that the administration said they felt needed to be improved upon is the timing of the school's School Reach Program, where the school personnel call parents to inform them of the emergency, and that their children would be kept at the school. While this did eventually occur, it was nearly 15 minutes after the warning had gone into effect.

Both principals, along with Silver Lake Superintendent Dr. Pegram, realized that the timing of this information should be improved.

Even with the problems that the unlucky timing of the tornado warning caused, Winter believed that the emergency was handled well by everyone.

"The staff and kids handled it exceptionally well. It appeared that they had been paying attention to the drills and knew where to go," said Winter.