Well, I have an 85-year-old uncle who was with me. If you want 3rd-party confirmation, I guess I could buy him a computer, guide him through the signup process, explain the protocols to him and let him do that.
If you rode out a direct hit by even one EF5 tornado by lying in a low spot in an open field, I’d be quite impressed and congratulate you as being one very lucky dude. If you rode out more than one direct hit by an EF5 tornado while lying in a low spot in an open field, you should buy a lottery ticket. Certainly surviving an EF5 should be a memorable enough event for you to not to have your 85-year uncle vouch for you. You should be able to give us the date, the place and probably very nearly the exact time it occurred.
A lot of these kids would have been a lot better off in the open and on the ground in a low spot.
In tornadoes most people are killed or seriously injured by flying debris. While you might, if the tornado doesn’t come right over you, be relatively safer in a low lying ditch than completely out in the open, if of course you had nowhere else to go, but consider that the debris ball from a large tornado can be twice as large as the tornado itself. While you may survive the tornado force winds (assuming it doesn’t pick you up and drop you some miles away) and some debris by getting as low as possible, if you are out in the open, there is nothing to stop the debris, debris that in a big tornado might include, cars, trucks, semi’s, large trees, and chunk of building debris from raining down on you.
So the authority figures at that school did not force their silliness on elementary school kids.
While it is sad that there were lives lost, especially those of children; of the 24 confirmed deaths (which considering the size and violence of this tornado, was much lower than originally reported or expected), 7 of them were children at the Plaza Towers elementary school. But the thing that people should keep in mind is that it was a miracle that only 7 kids died in that building considering the direct hit it took and that there was nearly 500 children, teachers and other adults who sought shelter in that bad, poorly built and evil “government” building and that at Briarwood Elementary another bad, poorly built and evil “government” building a few miles away which was also in the direct path, no one lost their lives.
But if they were to have followed your “advice”, as the EF5 tornado was bearing down on them, the teachers should have flung all the doors of the school open and told the kids to run; “Run Forest! Run!”,”Run like Hell” and “You’re on your own now, may the fastest runners among you survive” and get to the nearest open field and find a low spot and hang on to any blade of grass you can find or a cow if one is nearby. Yea. Right. I don’t know how many kids you know who are of kindergarten to 3rd or 4th grade age but although my great nieces and nephews are some very bright kids, they are little kids and I can’t imagine telling them to run away from a tornado and find the closest ditch to hide in all on their own.
And speaking of open fields and cows, watch this. Some of that “debris” flying around are cows.
Tornado and Cows, April 14 2012, southwest of Salina near Langley KS.
So perhaps hanging out with and on to cows in an open field during a tornado is not such a good idea after all.
Getting into a ditch is the best thing to do if AND ONLY IF no other shelter is available. I would concede that you “might” be better off in a ditch than in a trailer/mobile home or car. But you want to put as much mass and or as many sturdy structures and walls between you and the flying projectiles as possible. You want to protect you head as much as possible as you are most likely to be killed by taking a direct hit to the head by debris, even small debris or even softball sized hail. Completely underground is best but even in an underground storm shelter, a bike, motor cycle or football helmet is probably not a bad idea.