Dismiss to where? To go home only to be killed or injured as that F5 ripped the house apart?
Look for it to be declared an F5. I cannot understand why it was given an F4 instead.
Responsibility2nd: “To go home only to be killed or injured as that F5 ripped the house apart?”
That is the parent’s decision to make, not the schools.
If you don’t live here, you don’t probably understand exactly how accurate tornado tracking is in Oklahoma City. We were about 2 miles from it and watched it as it went past. Why didn’t we run to shelter? Because the news was reporting its exact location (confirmed by our own observations).
Unless one is right in the path of these things, the risk of injury or destruction is virtually nil. With as accurate as the news is, it’s possible to simply drive a mile or two out of the tornado’s path. Although that’s not wise in most cases, it’s probably better than trying to hunker down in a structure that’s directly in the path of a F-5 tornado.
Bottom line: parents should have the ultimate authority and responsibility for their children. It’s their decision to make.
Some parents were going to the school to pick up their kids and leave the area entirely -- not to return home.
I don’t see the benefit of keeping hundreds of children concentrated inside the school building, as opposed to dispersing them. Dispersal maximizes the probability of individual survival.