Tornado Hits Birmingham UK

Poststructural Pub
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4725279.stm

Tornado injures 19 in Birmingham


Nineteen people have been injured - three seriously - as a tornado ripped through the streets of Birmingham.
The sudden storm damaged buildings, uprooted trees and trapped people in their homes. The Met Office estimates the wind speed may have reached 130mph.

One sq km of damage was caused in Kings Heath, with “hundreds” of properties affected, council officials said.

Emergency services used dogs and specialist equipment to see if anyone had been trapped in damaged buildings.

Birmingham City Council set up a shelter at Aston University for people made temporarily homeless to spend the night.

An ambulance spokesperson said: "The Ambulance Service has removed approximately 20 patients to Heartlands Hospital, Selly Oak Hospital, and Dudley.

It looks like something from a film set

Julia Banner
Eyewitness
"One child was taken to Birmingham Children’s’ Hospital. None of the injuries are believed to be life-threatening, although three patients were more seriously injured with fractures.

“Numerous casualties have been treated on scene by ambulance crews and medics, many roads are blocked by fallen trees and ambulance staff were running on foot to reach casualties.”

West Midlands Fire Service said the areas affected included Kings Heath, Moseley, Quinton, Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook.

‘Frightened children’

Caroline Ward, from the Jon Carrie Nursery in Moseley, said the tornado ripped out fences and toys were whipped into the air.

“Luckily we got the children all inside but they were very frightened,” she told BBC News.

Julia Banner, who works in a care home in Moseley, said: "All of a sudden it got dark, the front door blew open and all the notices blew off the notice board.

"The kitchen window was open and all the crockery smashed to the floor.


The storm hit with very little warning
“It all happened in just a couple of minutes. There is a tree through a car and trees on houses - it looks like something from a film set.”

A Met Office spokesperson said: "From the reports we have heard we would estimate that this is a tornado with a rating of T3-T4, that would mean it had wind speeds of between 93-114 mph for T3 and 114-130 for T4.

"A typical description would be that motorcars were lifted and destroyed, roofs removed from buildings and weak buildings destroyed.

"We have an average of 33 reports of tornadoes in the UK each year but these are especially rare in built-up areas and there has not been one of this strength in many years.

“City centres are not the natural habitat of a tornado; the tall buildings would normally stop their formation.”

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I don’t like tornadoes very much.

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Me neither!

Will they be taking a collection for those who need assistance in the aftermath?

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Hopefully their car, home & contents insurance policies will cover the material damage, if not the mental trauma. It must be heartbreaking to have something like this happen to you, especially out of the blue. It’s not like they set up home next to a live volcano or something.

I wonder how I would react if I got home to find my house half in ruins as many people must have done yesterday?

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as a survivor of an F5 - my thoughts are with the survivors…

Martin, how frequently do tornados hit in this area? I honestly don’t remember reading of any before.

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Tornadoes DON’T hit this area. Ever. Except this one did. First one ever as far as I know, certainly first in my lifetime. Birmingham’s actually quite a way from the coast, or any major mountains or rivers, or anything that usually causes freak weather patterns.

Back in the 80s a hurricane hit London and the South East. I was in Birmingham at University and missed it, but many trees came down, some houses were damaged by falling trees, and quite a few cars were wrecked, but nothing on this scale. My parents have pictures of a tree that narrowly missed their car, and the crescent still looks odd with one small tree replanted in the row.

Sadly environmental disasters like this are now happening every few months even in the temperate UK. Floods are the commonest, with many coastal and riverside areas in danger. Whether (no pun intended) this is the effect of global warming is still uncertain.

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I heard an interview on Radio 4 this morning, where they said the last tornado that hit Birmingham was 30 years ago. They’re rare on this scale, but apparently not as rare as one might think. This from May of this year:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4510071.stm

According to studies by the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (Torro), the UK has the most tornadoes for the size of the country in the world.

“There are around 35 reported tornados each year in the UK, but there could be more which aren’t reported,” said Laura Gilchrist, of the BBC Weather Centre.

Britain has been struck by at least a dozen tornados in recent years and one person has been killed.

However, the severe tornadoes such as those experienced across the central plains of the US are a rarity - although they are not unheard of.

The article in full is very interesting indeed.

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And where’s the Ministry for Magic in all of this? What are they doing about it? I doubt Fudge will be in office much longer.

djm

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“I doubt Fudge will be in office much longer”

SPOILER ALERT!
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he’s not - there’s a new guy in the latest book.

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So that expains the dislike for JES avatars.

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“There are around 35 reported tornados each year in the UK, but there could be more which aren’t reported,” said Laura Gilchrist, of the BBC Weather Centre.

I lie awake at night worrying about unreported statistics.

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Fly wrote:
“So that expains the dislike for JES avatars.”

Yep. April 3, 1974 - 6:00pm I watched the same darn thing come up the hill toward my house, ran to the basement when it was 4 houses away, it hit ours at 6:04pm. Our entire neighborhood was destroyed - our house was the only one salvagable. Luckily no humans killed - lost lots of dogs and several horses in the neighborhood (and found a cow standing in our yard afterwards). Had mud everywhere (it had sucked up the bottom of the Ohio before hitting Saylor Park, Mack, Reading, Sharonville, then us {Mason}).
Then, without electricity for over a week, what was ok in our basement was ruined because of water backup (no sump pump).

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Crud. The alert and the spoiler were both on screen at once. sigh Haven’t been able to start the book yet and I really need to stop stumbling onto spoilers. :frowning: It’s getting irritating… :cry:

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avanutria wrote:
“The alert and the spoiler were both on screen at once.”

I’m sorry - I thought I put enough space in between them… :sniffle:

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Not your fault…spacing depends on screen resolution settings of the viewer, which is completely out of your control. Anyway it wasn’t a HUGE plot detail :slight_smile:

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Avanutria’s a real fast reader.


I know that from chat.

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Beth, just read the book already! :smiley: You are a fast reader.

Read it, you’ll be glad you did, really…


:slight_smile: Sara (who’s hubby surprised her by bringing home the book over the weekend and has now read it cover to cover yeah)


And on an on topic note, tornados are awful and scarey and that’s one reason why you couldn’t pay me to move away from the Rocky Mountians where in twenty plus years I have only seen one small tornado from a distance (and that was big and close enough). Really. :really:

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You should see her write!

SPOILER ALERT :imp:
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(if only for the odd facial expressions) :laughing:

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/Hermione mode on/ But Martin, you can’t actually see facial expressions over the internet! Honestly, am I the only one around here who’s read Muggles, A History? /Hermione mode off/



Sorry, couldn’t resist. I really like Hermione, she’d better not die in the next book, she’d better marry Ron and live happily ever after! (Though hubby thinks Rowling should do a Steven King type twist and have EVERYONE die except for “he-who-must-not-be named” and his death eaters who then take over the world. He doesn’t like Harry Potter very much.)

:slight_smile: Sara

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Oh, I fully intend to and am greatly looking forward to it, but I have a prior obligation of finishing my dissertation before the middle of August. I still have 7,500 words to write and the Harry Potter book would take me three or four days to read it. I haven’t got that much time to spare! But as soon as I am done, I am diving into the sixth book.