The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 27

The Cincinnati Enquirer FMOK Sunday, April 11, 1999 B3 We restored power to 600 customers today and hope to have another 600 restored by midnight tonight. Kathy Meinke, Cinergy spokeswoman The sirens Experts: There's mo 'absolute9 wan Civil defense sirens This map shows the 175 civil defense sirens in the cities, villages and townships in Hamilton County. Symmes Twp. Springdale Forest Park 2 3 Sharonville 7 -Glendale Loveland 1 Harrison Twp. 3 Crosby Twp.

.1 breenhi Ms ISnrinofieid wodlawn Evendale Did you hear? As the killer tornado approached Greater Cincinnati early Friday morning, did you hear the civil defense sirens that were triggered to warn of the dangerous storm? The Enquirer wants to hear from you today. Please include your name, neighborhood and a telephone number where you can be reached today. We will publish your story this week. Telephone: 381-2800, ext. 7010.

Fax: 768-8340 or 768-8011. E-mail: Colerain Twp. Twp. Lincoln 1 burg, who sponsored it. The system will act like a reverse 911 system, where the communications system will call individual homes and play a recorded warning to residents when they answer.

Surveying the damage Saturday across Ripley County, which she represents, Ms. Duncan said she regretted that the system was not already in place. In Dearborn and Ripley counties, three houses, four mobile homes, 12 barns and several buildings were destroyed during Friday's storm. Often, that part of southeastern Indiana is the first when severe weather rumbles into the Tristate. "We're actually the warning post for Cincinnati," said farmer and trained tornado spotter Reading -Montgo -Harrison Blue Ash Hgts.

Mt. Healthy 1 I i Wyoming -Sycamore N. College Hill IjJJ LocklaA i 1 i Deer Park TwP BY DAN KLEPAL The Cincinnati Enquirer The phone started ringing right after the shock wore off. Jim Hughes, chief of the Miami Township Fire Department in Hamilton County, said he and his wife answered more than 50 calls Friday from people concerned about the area's civil defense sirens not working before Friday's killer tornado. Mr.

Hughes said at least two of the township's four sirens did not sound in the early morning hours as the twister swept through the area. "It's a tough situation, especially with late-night storms," said Mr. Hughes. "There's no absolute way to alert everyone, unless we go loor-to-door, and there's just not' enough time for that." Sirens warn people cf an approaching storm, so they can seek shelter. The sirens were not designed to penetrate buildings or wake people from sleep.

Weather radios, which cost about $35, are the preferred method to warn people of inclement weather, said Don Mac-carone. director of the Hamilton Whitewater Twp. Rriingron Heights Village i 1 S' .4 Madeira 2 Indian Hill 4 ilford UU1I r.roan Tu.i. Mannr VetTOn i Miami Twp. 3 -d i l.Mariemont errace Cleves ark -j Miami i cmcmiun -mmm' lJ Twp.

North Bend Addyston DelhiTwp.l 9 I 11 SSS Anderson Twp. I One siren is shared by Green 8 VAi List from county I I SJyL40 indicates no sirens I and Delhi townships Jim Benham, whose barns and home were severely damaged Friday morning. Mr. Maccarone said new technology isn't really the issue. "There is no one perfect system," Mr.

Maccarone said. "You have to have a combina-' tion of tools to use. "We've already got the technology for every home in the area to have a warning and the most up-to-date weather information (weather radios). Why talk about new technology when people aren't even using existing technology?" installed during the 1950s. Sirens have been replaced periodically over the years, and several new ones were installed after the killer tornado in 1974 that swept through Sayler Park and Xenia in Greene County.

Each municipality pays for and decides where to place their sirens. Some regions are going to new technology. In Indiana, for example, a bill that would allow communities to use 911 funding to pay for an early-warning telephone system is on the verge of approval in the Senate, according to State Rep. Cleo Duncan, R-Greens- There are 175 civil defense sirens (like the one pictured left), which can be heard in a 1-mile radius in Hamilton County, and more than 300 in the Tristate. The system is designed as an outdoor warning system to alert people to an oncoming storm.

It was not designed to be used as an indoor warning system. County Emergency Management Agency. The loudness of each siren varies, depending on its age, the topography of the land and weather conditions. Generally, each siren has a range of one mile. sirens began being On Friday, the sirens were activated at 4:55 a.m., although it is thought by county officials that some of the sirens did not sound because of power outages.

Officials will not know until later this week exactly how many sirens sounded. During times of inclement weather, all of the sirens are triggered at once by a flick of the switch at the county's communication center in Colerain Township. Reporter Rachel Melcer contributed to this report. Source: Hamilton County Emergency Management Agency The Cincinnati EnquirerR. Cosby The cleanup Utility crews, municipal workers out in force PmxW4Mn ft lit BY BERNIE MIXON The Cincinnati Enquirer BLUE ASH Tornado cleanup began with the loud, incessant drone of power saws Saturday.

Snapped branches were piled at the ends of driveways and on roadsides to be hauled away by city service workers or chipped into mulch by tree companies slowly working their way through the area. Utility crews worked throughout the day to repair the damage caused by the Friday morning tornado that ripped through Blue Ash, Montgomery, Sycamore Township and Symmes Township. Cinergy crews spent the day taking down broken poles and replacing them with new ones, as well as stringing new wire. "We restored power to 600 customers today and hope to have another 600 restored by midnight tonight," said Kathy Meinke, a spokeswoman for Cinergy. Nearly 200,000 Cinergy customers lost power during the Friday morning storm.

By 10 p.m. Saturday, Cinergy officials said they expected to complete restoration efforts by midnight, about 18 hours ahead of schedule, according to Ms. Meinke. Another 1,500 buildings were so severely damaged that power could not be restored, she said. Cincinnati Bell reported fewer than 1,000 customers without phone service.

Major problem areas continue to be at Kemper and Montgomery -v vv i-ef Tne Cincinnan EnquirerSxeven M. nerppich Steve Cole moves tree limbs from his Lakewater Drive home with the help of friends Emily Huie and Meghan Mahoney, who are students at Miami University hard to say no. We are scheduling people as we go." On a normal Saturday, the company would have three to four crews working half the day. Post-tornado, eight crews were out in both Blue Ash and Montgomery. The company could have as many as eight crews back out on Monday, depending on the need.

"We are waiting to see if we have to call in crews from around the country," Mr. Vuotto said. "I've had managers call me from Louisville to Akron and Chicago saying if (we) need help to let them know." Ruined homes may be rebuilt, but it will be many years before the trees in neighborhoods such as Fallsington Grant and Montgomery Woods recover. "In the areas where (the tornado) totally destroyed homes, it totally destroyed whole forests of trees," Mr. Vuotto said.

"In the areas that are severely damaged, it will take years to recuperate." Cincinnati Bell said repair calls were back to normal. About 75 workers were making repairs Saturday. "Either there is buried cable or damaged cable," said Libby Ko-rosec, Cincinnati Bell spokeswoman. "In most cases we are waiting for poles to be replaced," Ms. Korosec said early in the day.

"We share poles with Cinergy, and they are putting up the poles." Customers without phone service should call 566-1511. majestic trees Montgomery was named a Tree City USA in 1997 needed help in sawing up the splintered remnants. "What we needed was manpower, saws, chippers, trucks, loaders; and they have supplied those to us," said Dennis Al-brinck, Blue Ash service director. It will take days to clear away all the fallen limbs and stumps from broken trees, Mr. Albrinck estimated.

Davey Tree and Lawn Care of Mount Repose had crews working in Blue Ash and Montgomery to help its regular customers and others with the cleanup. "We did our customers first," said Bob Vuotto, district manager for the company. "But we are helping others, too. It's Roads, Millview Drive and Cornell Road. Blue Ash and Montgomery service workers were joined by workers from neighboring communities not touched by the storm.

Blue Ash and Montgomery, known for their mature and The Cincinnati EnquirerSteven M. Herppich A precarious load is salvaged from a home on Lakewater Drive in Montgomery. Disaster from the ground level Mother Nature's worst brings out the best in human nature station is on the very edge of the damage. "For me," he says, "it was cosmetic. I lost a sign.

I called the insurance company because that's what you're supposed to do, but I told them to put me at the bottom of the list. A lot of people are worse off." Mike Davis of the Blue Ash police department is directing traffic at the corner. "You wanna meet somebody who has been working his tail off?" he says. "There's a guy here from who was here within two hours and hasn't stopped." Disaster relief Ron Stewart, 32 years with the utility company, is helping untangle the mess along Pfeiffer. He's one of the workers responsible for turning the lights back on for the nearly 200,000 people who lost power.

He stands in front of a grievously twisted and broken dogwood tree. Its blossoms are strewn over the lawn. A 15-foot fir tree is on its side, a muddy scab where it once held the earth. Ron and his men fear they have seen a spark. They run toward, not away, from it.

I am thinking they are brave. And probably tired and hungry. I am thinking that when you look at disaster from ground level, this is what you see. You see a police officer directing traffic who thinks that a guy in a heading back toward Blue Ash. Down Pfeiffer Road, I can hear the buzz of saws.

Rob Miller, who owns the Blue Ash Shell station at the corner of Kenwood and Pfeiffer roads, says he got a call about 5:20 Friday morning from his night manager, Betty Hicks. "She said the power was out and she thought we'd been hit by a tornado." Minutes later, he got a call saying his sister's home near Harper's Point had been hit. "Man, I live just down the road in Deer Park," he said, "and I looked out my window and couldn't see a thing. Not even a broken tree branch or a tipped-over garbage can." His trying to find a way to work. Some, temporarily furloughed by power outages, were trying to find a way home.

The ARTIMIS sign on 1-71 north gave the first useful piece of information I've seen there. "West Pfeiffer closed. No access to disaster area." So maybe, I think, if I drive up Montgomery Road, I can get close. Trapped behind a Ford van with a Tasmanian Devil de-cal on the back, I creep through Montgomery's commercial district. The clock in front of Montgomery Inn is stopped at 5:15.

I am getting nowhere. The van makes a U-turn, and I am emboldened to do the same, white hard hat should be patted on the back. You see a man whose business has been battered who will give his place in line to somebody else. And what I know I know we will see in the next days and weeks are people who will gather up clothes and food and money for their neighbors who have been hurt by this storm. That much has not changed in 25 years.

E-mail Laura Pulfer at lpulferenquirer.com or call 768-8393. She can be heard Mondays on WVXU radio and on SPR's Morning Edition and Inter Media's Northern Kentucky Magazine. i Twenty-five years ago almost to the day I was standing at a window in the old Cincinnati Post building on Broadway, watching the storm come in. Like a fool. It just didn't look that dangerous from 16 floors up and a few miles away.

The sirens were shrieking, and in the gray light, we could see it coming toward us. All I remember is the perfect funnel cloud, with moving edges of doors and shingles and lawn furniture. April 3, 1974, the twister ripped through Sayler Park, hopped over Covedale and bullied its ugly way toward Xenia. Reporters and photographers LAURA PULFER jumped into cars and headed for the damage. My job was to help piece together their stories and photos.

Roads clogged On Friday, the sirens sounded again, and I was one of the people in a car, trying to see what had happened. The roads were clogged with commuters.