Rescue services need to be ready

How much wind have you experienced? On the water, bad things happen at 30+ knots and worth avoiding with forecasting and commonsense. But on land, eluding violent storms is not as easy and rescue services need to be ready.

Still, training for an EF5 tornado is hard to imagine. This is the highest, most violent classification for a weather event delivering 3-second gust wind speeds exceeding 200 mph. You don’t get that sticking your head out the car window, yet that’s what they prepare for in Oklahoma.

Using helicopters and drones, emergency services at Camp Gruber Training Center hosted Exercise Lightning Strike, a domestic exercise scenario of an EF5 tornado. When you raise the bar that high, lowering rescue swimmers to aid disabled boaters must be pretty elementary.