After high winds toppled a huge outdoor stage, killing five people and injuring at least four dozen, questions about whether the fair did enough to anticipate a storm have loomed over the event. Some fairs hire their own meteorologists for just such a scenario.
The Indiana fair's one-page plan has nine bullet points. Two of them quote specific wording for announcements to be made when severe weather moves in and when the all-clear is sounded. State fair spokesman Andy Klotz confirmed Tuesday that the one-page statement is the event's severe weather policy but declined to elaborate.
While the page is part of an overall emergency plan, it's far less specific than the policies of other state fairs and outdoor venues, some of which have iron-clad rules about weather and stage construction.
Managers of the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tenn., ask engineers to review and approve onstage sound and lighting equipment.
Let's stop bucketing meteorology and weather in general into some magical mystery science that can't be explained. When a tragic accident due to existing extreme weather conditions occurs, there is a notion to just throw your hands up in the air and say, "Well, nothing could have been done to avoid this" or "Nobody could have seen this coming" or "It was just a damn fluke". In many instances, that just simply is not the case and it wasn't the case in the tragedy at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Powerful, damaging winds were a known threat several days before and during the minutes leading up to the stage collapse.
But with all this said, it shouldn't have even come down to a warning issued by the National Weather Service. Brad Panovich, chief meteorologist at WCNC-TV, Charlotte, N.C., notes in a recent blog entry of histhat evacuations and the priority of seeking shelter even before the issuance of a severe thunderstorm warning should have already been in place. We are talking about a recipe for disaster — an approaching line of severe thunderstorms containing high winds and lightning bearing down on a large, metal but seemingly fragile outdoor stage set with its rigging standing high and hovering over the crowd below.
Story: Indiana fair's storm plan is brief, generic
He writes, "Problem here is you have people in an outdoor event and around a temporary structure which requires them to seek shelter at a much lower threshold. Something that should have been known by those organizing the event. One of the fatalities was a stage hand in a metal light structure running a spot light, with lightning clearly visible in the distance. Lightning alone was sufficient reason to evacuate people and since lightning was within 10 miles of the fair grounds patrons should have been seeking shelter.
The science of meteorology is growing by leaps and bounds especially with continuing advances in satellite and radar technology. When severe weather strikes, we are in awe of the power and the visuals but we shouldn't be in awe of the severe weather event itself. There are definitive and well-known reasons why hail reaches softball size or a tornado strikes one neighborhood but misses the other or why wind gusts reach 70 mph. This isn't voodoo, this is meteorology. The science is getting better and better each day in timing of significant weather and its location down to city landmarks and even street level.
Let's stop dismissing the science and making it a scapegoat. The gust front was not random. This was a severe weather event which was well predicted but still led to the deaths of 5 people who were hoping to see a Sugarland concert.
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