Twister death toll at school raises questions

updated 1:04 a.m. ET March 3, 2007

ENTERPRISE, Ala. - Residents of the neighborhood surrounding Enterprise High School said Friday they heard warning sirens long before a tornado on Thursday slammed into the building, crushing eight students in an avalanche of concrete and metal.

“It came real fast, but they had plenty of time to get those kids out because sirens were going off all morning,” said Pearl Green, whose 15-year-old niece attends the school and was hit in the head by a flying brick.

But school officials said they had no chance to evacuate earlier because of the approaching severe weather. And others said the carnage would have been greater if students had been outside or on the road when the storm hit.

Gov. Bob Riley defended administrators’ actions after a tour of the school.

“I don’t know of anything they didn’t do,” Riley said after stepping out of the collapsed hallway where the students died. “If I had been there, I hope I would have done as well as they did.”

The last of the bodies were removed Friday.

“Each one who was brought out, somebody would say, ‘That was a good kid,”’ said Bob Phares, assistant superintendent.

The students were among 20 people killed Thursday in Alabama, Georgia and Missouri by tornadoes contained in a line of thunderstorms that stretched from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. The storms damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes, toppled trees and knocked down power lines. In Enterprise, a town of 22,000 people, more than 50 people were hurt.

President Bush planned to visit two of the storm-damaged areas Saturday. The destinations were still being worked out Friday with governors in the affected states.

Second warning disrupts dismissal
Warning sirens began blaring in Enterprise about 10:30 a.m. Thursday, prompting school officials to order the high school’s 1,200 students into interior halls — supposedly the safest part of the building.

A team of forensic experts combed through the debris, took calculations and has an early determination: This was an enhanced F3 tornado with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour. But there's no need to hear that when you're standing in the midst of the rubble. Cars, upended and tossed into homes, huge pine trees snapped like toothpicks, and the look on the faces of those who survived the disaster: shock, and now despair. --NBC's Kerry Sanders in Enterprise, Ala. Read the rest in The Daily Nightly

Many students left school after the initial warnings, and administrators decided to dismiss classes at 1 p.m., before the worst of the weather was forecast to hit, Phares said.

But with hundreds of students still huddled inside the school, emergency management officials warned that a possible twister was on the way and advised school officials to hold students until 1:30 p.m., Phares said.

“The storm hit about 1:15,” he said. A wall in one hall collapsed, and the concrete slab roof fell on the victims.

Brittany Ammons, 18, left school about 10 minutes before the tornado struck. She said students in the halls could hear the sirens, but no one panicked.

“We weren’t really worried because we’re always hearing sirens for bad weather,” Ammons said.

Looking at the remains of their school, Ammons and three classmates wondered whether students should have been sent home after the first warnings were issued. But senior Charles Strickland said the carnage would have been far worse if students were trying to leave school during the storm.

“If they’d let us out, they’d be looking at 50 to 300 dead,” Strickland said. He pointed to a parking lot full of students’ vehicles that were thrown around by the twister, with some coming to rest against the building.

“Imagine those kids in the parking lot sitting in those cars,” English teacher Beverly Thompson said.

Mitch Edwards, spokesman for the Alabama Board of Education, said the state has a plan requiring schools to conduct weather drills and review safety plans. But the decision on whether to close schools is left to superintendents and principals.

“It’s a situation where local superintendents and principals are in position to make the best call,” Edwards said. “They try to react based on the best information available.”

Georgia evacuations, deaths
The massive storm system swept into Georgia later Thursday, with another tornado apparently touching down near the Sumter Regional Hospital in Americus, 117 miles south of Atlanta. It blew out the windows, tossing cars into trees and killing at least two people, said Buzz Weiss of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

Doctors, nurses and volunteers had worked into the night to evacuate dozens of patients.

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