Warning not as fast as tornado

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WELD COUNTY - Windsor, Fort Collins and Larimer County residents didn't get emergency calls from authorities ahead of Thursday's tornadoes because there either wasn't time to do it or there was no clear idea where the storms were headed, officials said Friday.

"We received a warning about a tornado in southwest Weld County," Windsor-Severance Fire Chief Brian Martens said Friday. "About a half-hour later, we got a hail warning. Seven minutes after that, (the tornado) hit."

Martens said he barely got his men at Fire Station No. 1 into the basement. The chief, who tried to close the last of the bay doors, was prevented from doing so by the suction from the twister.

The storm also kept him from being able to open the door to the basement, leaving him in the fire garage to watch the tornado pass by.

Storm's path unclear Fort Collins and Larimer County residents did not get emergency calls because city and county emergency managers weren't sure where the storms were tracking. The city and county also did not use their systems that can preempt local radio and television broadcasts to alert residents.

"People have to be aware of the weather and all other hazards on their own long before they should expect a warning from us," said Erik Nilsson, Larimer County's emergency manager. "We need people, first and foremost, to take care of themselves."

Nilsson said the county's 911 alert system is best used when there's a clear, defined danger, location and timeframe. With reports of funnel clouds all over the county Thursday, he said trying to give people solid information would have been difficult.

"We've got to have people listening to the radio and listening to the television," Nilsson said. "That's the way it is, and that's the way it has to be."

He added: "We will use the reverse 911 for hazards that we know will be in a certain geographic area and at a pretty certain time. There's 275,000 people here. Our job isn't to take care of people, primarily. It's to help them take care of themselves. People have to stand on their own two feet."

Schools use alerts

The city and county's responses to the devastating tornadoes were different than those of Colorado State University and Poudre School District, which decided to alert their communities with general information that become more specific over time.

CSU, for instance, sent out five separate text messages to 25,000 campus subscribers, alerting anyone in the area to seek more information and take cover if necessary. Larimer County is due to roll out a similar system this summer.

And the Poudre School District, which locked down its schools in response to the storm, alerted parents via multiple e-mails and its Web site, then called more than 17,000 homes after releasing a lockdown.

No storm sirens Martens, the Windsor-Severance fire chief, said there is no formal procedure for his department to follow for a tornado. If he had known a tornado was approaching, Martens said he would have notified school district officials first and then called Windsor police so that both could put their plans into action.

"Beyond that, there is not set procedure," he said.

Some people asked why the town's storm siren wasn't used.

Martens said the siren was taken out of service in 1999. He also pointed out that the siren was never used as a tornado warning system.

"It was for volunteers, to notify them of a call," Martens said. "But with the new technology, it was faster to use pagers to call the volunteers. So the siren was taken out of service."

Nilsson said Larimer County and Fort Collins have repeatedly considered buying warning sirens like those used in Boulder County cities but rejected them over the cost. He said Thursday's storms could prompt a new discussion about them.

Larimer County Sheriff's spokeswoman Eloise Campanella issued dozens of alerts to media Thursday and Friday, asking reporters to disseminate the information. Her first alert went out at 12:47 p.m.

"I was giving that information to you folks to do with what you felt was appropriate to do with it," Campanella said. "As PIO, I go through the media. The media and I work together to get the information out to the public."

Alerting parents

Ellen Laubhan, a spokeswoman for the Poudre School District, said parents were first alerted of the schools' lockdown about 12:30 p.m. via e-mail and the Web site, and updates were sent about every 20 minutes until the schools were released from lockdown about 1:30 p.m.

The district also considered using its electronic phone system to call parents, but officials decided to wait until they had solid information before taking that step.

"We considered using it before that time, but things were changing very rapidly. We wanted to wait until we had stable information," Laubhan said. "We wanted to send information when the situation was stable."

The district began reacting to the storm after a parent called from Loveland about 11:30 a.m., officials said. The National Weather Service issued its first tornado warning for southwest Weld County at 11:18 and followed it with one that added southeast Larimer County at 11:35. Five more warnings for the local area followed, the last at 3:29 p.m.

"Once we knew, we started getting online, tracking the storm, the warnings going on," said Bill Franzen, executive director of operations for PSD.

Franzen said the district used multiple methods to contact schools, administrators and teachers leading field trips, from cell phones, e-mails and text messages to two-way radios.

Many communication efforts Thursday were hampered by the overloading of area mobile phone networks.

CSU, for instance, said its first batch of text messages was received by 97 percent of subscribers "almost immediately." But subsequent messages had a delivery rate of about 80 percent, CSU said Friday.

"Our information indicates that several cell phone towers were out of working order during the afternoon, and that the cell phone systems in the area may have become jammed with traffic as people called their family and friends," CSU spokeswoman Dell Rae Moellenberg said.

CSU's first text alert was received by subscribers about 1 p.m. Moellenberg said the university is examining whether it should have reacted faster.

In addition to the text messages, CSU sent out e-mails and updated its Web site. And campus police officers drove the campus, warning people via loudspeakers mounted in their patrol vehicles.