Last Sunday, April 10, 2011, while chasing storms across central Wisconsin on a moderate risk day, my three teammates and I found ourselves stranded in a traffic bottleneck on eastbound I-90 just west of Oakdale. Ordinarily I would have viewed the situation as merely an inconvenience, but with a tornado-warned supercell bearing down on us, and with the radar showing pronounced rotation making a beeline for our location, the matter elicited somewhat greater concern. We could see what appeared to be the mesocyclone advancing over the hilltops. But we couldn’t do a thing about it, nor could any of the several hundred other vehicles that were backed up for a mile or two in both directions, courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
Fortunately, nothing tragic happened. But it could have. The storm wasn’t merely Doppler-warned–it produced a number of tornadoes. We encountered some of its handiwork later on in Arkdale, consisting of a good quarter-mile-wide swath of shredded trees and badly damaged houses. Had the storm gone tornadic a few miles prior, it would have gobbled up helpless motorists like a giant Pac Man in an M&M plant.
What highway department contractor made the outrageous decision to hold up traffic in a way that put hundreds of people directly in harm’s way with no escape? The storms didn’t form in an information vacuum. Three days prior, the Storm Prediction Center had already outlooked the area as a moderate risk. Forecasters had been consistently harping about the possibility of strong, long-lived tornadoes. The weather was hardly a surprise that caught road repair team leaders unaware. So my inevitable conclusion is that some boneheaded foreman was so hell-bent on getting the job done at all costs that he or she willfully exposed hundreds of drivers to a potentially deadly weather event.
Such action is worse than irresponsible; it borders on criminal. I do not want the highway department making dispassionate decisions that risk my life and a multitude of others on behalf of a DOT schedule. How much time would have been lost rather than saved had the worst happened and the focus shifted from road work to emergency response? With scores of crumpled vehicles strewn along the highway and scattered across the field, how would the Department of Transportation have explained a common-sense-be-damned approach that resulted in multiple deaths and injuries?
The incident I’ve cited is just one of innumerable highway closures that occur all across the Midwest due to road work that continues despite tornado watches and warnings. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered the practice, just the most infuriating, and yes, the scariest because of the immediacy of the storm. I doubt anything I say here is going to change the mindset responsible for such scenarios, but it deserves to be called out for its life-endangering lunacy, and this is as good a place as any to do so. It’s my blog, and right now I feel like using it to rant.
WisDOT, what on earth were you thinking, assuming that you were thinking at all? Get a clue: Public safety trumps your deadlines. Evidently someone in your ranks felt differently last Sunday, choosing to put hundreds of motorists in jeopardy rather than suspend road work on account of a tornado warning. Does that kind of decision accurately reflect your policy? If so, then those of you in charge ought to be flogged at noon in the middle of the town square.
However, a more constructive alternative would be for you to re-examine your guidelines for road work during severe weather, and to make whatever changes are necessary in order to put the public’s interests ahead of your own.
Bob,
This is a fantastic observation about how weather impacts such a wide range of people, and sometimes those people have no idea they are being impacted. I empathize with your frustration. Have you sent the WDOT an email/letter of some type?
Thanks very much for bringing this up.
Greg
You’re right, Greg, the majority of the drivers caught in that bottleneck Sunday probably weren’t aware of the kind of storm that was bearing down on them. Not that it would have made much difference, because traffic was stalled for the ignorant and the informed alike.
I looked today for contact information at WDOT, maybe an email address where I could send them a little food for thought, but I didn’t find anything that looked like the right point of contact. I’m going to try again tomorrow.
ADDENDUM: I have sent the following message to Wisconsin Governor Walker and the Bureau of State Highway Projects:
Dear Governor Walker and Bureau of State Highway Projects:
I am a storm chaser. Last Sunday, April 10, my teammates and I were tracking with a tornado-warned storm along eastbound I-90 when traffic came to an abrupt, unexpected standstill near Oakdale. With the business area of the storm approaching the bottlenecked area, hundreds of vehicles were caught in harm’s way with no means of escape because some highway department contractor didn’t have the common sense to suspend work during a severe weather situation. Most of the people sitting in their cars probably didn’t realize how desperate their situation could be. We did. The radar showed pronounced rotation heading directly at us, and visually, we could see it advancing over the hills.
The fact that nothing serious happened is simply God’s grace, because the storm put down a series of tornadoes during its lifespan. Had one of them crossed the highway at that location, the result would have been catastrophic. Scores of helpless drivers would have been trapped with absolutely nowhere to go for shelter thanks to a boneheaded decision on the part of WisDOT to continue working despite imminent, life-threatening weather. That weather had been too well forecast for it to have taken WisDOT by surprise. Three days prior, the Storm Prediction Center had issued a moderate risk for Wisconsin, and weather forecasters had been warning about the high likelihood of a significant tornado event for several days. I’m left to conclude that some WisDOT employee or contractor willfully chose to gamble with the public’s safety in order to stay on schedule.
I have discussed this event in greater detail in my blog in a post yesterday titled Highway Work during Tornado Watches and Warnings. Now I am calling it to your attention. I understand that WisDOT deals with budget constraints and deadlines I know nothing about. But public safety trumps all such concerns. That certainly should have been the case last Sunday, and it should be in the future.
Sincerely
Bob Hartig
Great observations. Often, I believe, there is a “Oh, that can’t happen here” mindset that easily turns sour!
Bob,
I was referred here by Roger Edwards. From what I have seen over the last 20 years of chasing, it’s not that a foreman ignore dthe warning. Usually, all electronic devices save for cell phones are banned for construction sites. That’s usually in the rules and regs…so that someone doesn’t text while driving a steamroller and inadvertently flattens something they weren’t supposed to.
The problem is that they tend to work in everything…even non-severe thunderstorms, although for those, I do see the majority go into their trucks, at least around here in Illinois.
But the real issue is that, due to laws, AM?FM radios are out…and the ones driving the heavy machinery usually wear noise-cancelling headphones. Try to hear a weather radio over a jackhammer. And in these tight times, the foreman is out working with the guys as well. heck, even postal workers are banned from carrying any electronics on board, save for a cell phone, *and including weather radios*. That gets bad when you have a rural route and are caught in the open…but gets even worse in the city, when you can’t see anything because of buildings and trees in the way.
So yes, that needs to change, but how to make that happen, other than changing the law, I don’t know.
Gilbert, thanks for sharing. Your name is long familiar to me and we chatted briefly at the last COD severe weather symposium in 2009. You raise some good points–and I know there are plenty of good points to be made, some of which can paint a picture of road repair and construction realities that I’m not aware of. Factor all of them together, though, and your last sentence still sums it all up: something needs to change. Otherwise, one of these days the bullet won’t get dodged and the highway department will be called to account for a disaster it could have avoided by thinking through its severe weather policy and making appropriate adjustments. With a good three days lead time, last Sunday was a prime example of a situation that need never and should never have occurred.
I should mention that, to the best of my recollection, there wasn’t any signage announcing road work up ahead. My first indication was when the traffic in front of us began slowing down and then came to a stop. To be sure, I just called my buddy Bill, who was driving, and he, too, recalls seeing nothing in the way of road signs, cones, or any kind of advance warning that could have alerted us or anyone else to the closure in time to exit the Interstate in favor of an alternate route.
I totally agree with you but what bothers me more is the employees being made to stay at work with no cover. There is a lot of that going on. I myself dodged a bullet recently with the disaster that hit Alabama. I was made to stay at work without proper coverage. Then leaving time there was still storms everywhere. I would love to see all company’s have to have a proper approved tornado plan. Including places like walmart that make you stay and then just want to put you in the center of the store. To many lives are being lost. If they are going to be open they should provide better shelters.
This being said why can’t our schools even have proper shelters. We are seeing a lot where the halls although may be the safest place are not safe enough. What price is worth paying to be safe.