I recently stumbled across a year-old tornado story from AL.com quoting a man, Sam Moerbe, about the devastation wrought by a tornado hitting Fultondale Jan. 25, 2021.
‘It looks like a bomb went off,’ Moerbe said.
Reading that quote, I immediately thought of how many times as a reporter covering tornados have I’ve heard that description. (Also, ‘it sounded like a freight train.’)
But I also thought of Ukraine which is being bombed daily by the Russians.
I wondered if civilians, especially children, were/are using helmets while sheltering from bombs.
A few years ago I wrote a story for AL.com which helped sway the Centers for Disease Control to add helmets to their list of safety measures taken during a twister. This inquiry was an outgrowth of the devastating April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak. The storms persisted all day, spawning 62 tornadoes, leaving 250 dead.
Jefferson County (the only county at the time to do autopsies on the victims) reported 11 of the 21 killed in the county, died from head trauma. County medical examiner Robert Brissie, now deceased, said a good number of those 11 might have lived if they had been wearing a helmet. If you extrapolate that, admittedly small sample size, you can see the possibility of saving hundred, if not, thousands Here’s more from one of several stories I wrote:
- A Pleasant Grove boy, wearing a softball helmet with a mask, was blown from his house soaring nearly as high as the telephone lines, his mother said. But he escaped serious injury although he hit his head on landing in the lot across the street. His doctor said the helmet probably saved his life.
- A University of Alabama at Birmingham 50-year review of historical literature found numerous examples of anecdotal evidence that wearing a helmet saved lives during tornadoes.
There are military helmets that can be bought online but they are expensive and I’m unsure if they would fit a child. Alternatives include baseball helmets with face protector like the Pleasant Grove boy; bicycle helmets; football; motorcycle; and skateboard . Anything that might protect the head from debris of a bomb blast is better than none.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that 474 civilians have been killed during the invasion so far, with the agency saying it believes that the real figures are considerably higher.’
Among the dead are 29 children.,
I’ve seen numerous towns and neighborhoods devastated by tornadoes, and, yes, they often look like the scene of a bombing.
I’ve never heard the flipside of that quote, however. In other words, someone being interviewed about a bomb blast, saying: ‘It looks like a tornado hit.’