I'm waiting for the Big One to hit LA or SF just to see how the TSA reacts at LAX or SFO :D

Can't wait to see flattened NoS!

Both of which I find counterproductive.

Some of the A.S.S.s have bellies that look like that turtle shell :p

STL has two BKSX.. Hopefully I can update the NoS list to say that STL HAD two BKSX :cool:

A drill is a little hard to pull off in an airport, especially one that has true 24hr operations (don't know if STL is such an airport). There should be plans in place that have been tested to a degree. I'd be surprised if STL didn't have such a plan, but if they did someone was asleep at the wheel.

Disaster planning and testing on a large scale is a difficult exercise. The FAA mandated biennial disaster testing was a royal PITA. On the other hand, a well put-together and executed drill is a beauty to behold. And it's good to know if the ATCT ever had to actually pick up the crash phone, things would go smoothly.

On another note, how common are tornadoes in STL. We had oiur fair share and when we were making large capital improvements to passenger terminals, I was always thinking, "Why all the glass? This will be a freaking slaughterhouse if we ever get hit by a tornado.". Glad to know STL managed to prove me wrong.

Being as reactionary as they are and all, TSA will probably be doing tornado safety drills at LAX in the next month or so to demonstrate their preparedness to cope with the issue.

Which concourse is that? What terminals? Where did you see it?

I'm not sure you could effectively do a real evacuation exercise either. A reasonable approach (I use "reasonable" when discussing the TSA with "an abundance of caution...") would be to develop a plan and do paper exercises and training. It could be as simple as placing tornado evacuation signs throughout the airport telling people where to seek shelter. I would want the airport managers to be in charge of this planning and not the TSA. The TSA would be participants as airport tenants and that's it.

Based on 35+ years in the military and in the national security and civil space ops world, my hunch is that the airport had not thought through and/or exercised decision-making with the actual decision-makers themselves. Often, real-world event response will fail because nobody ever practiced making decisions. STL could have had the best tornado response plan in the country. But, if they rarely, or never, exercised the plan with the real people making real decisions in a real-time setting, the plan is useless.

As an example, screeners scurrying around when it was clearly too late tells me one or more of the following:

1. The TSA was not involved in the development and exercise of the airport tornado response plan, either by oversight or by the FSD's disinterest.

2. Neither the FSD nor any of the other local TSA managers, assuming they were involved in the planning, had ever played in an exercise. They either didn't know what to do or were incapable of receiving the warning and issuing instructions.

3. The TSA never took this seriously and never trained the screeners.

4. It never occurred to the TSA to provide severe weather information during shift change briefings, so nobody on shift that evening had even thought about the fact that there was a tornado watch which turned into a warning.

5. The TSA had no procedures in place to respond to a tornado warning.

Granted, the Weather Channel video of the surveillance video is about 30 seconds long. However, it appears as if the only humans who had not taken shelter were screeners. That tells me a lot.

I regret to inform you that the backscatter in Terminal 2 survived. Operations for WN today were normal. I don't know about the Main Terminal, just about all of the windows were boarded up. Damage to buildings west of the airport along the line of travel of the tornado was truly awesome, I'm suprised the Main Terminal is in as good of shape as it is. There is still hope that the NoS was destroyed.

Safety glass is a wonder to behold.....

A drill involving A.S.S.es would be a waste of time. These lard A.S.S.es lack the fire in the belly needed for leadership in a time of emergency. Plenty of belly, just not enough fire.

So when I first watched the youtube video in this thread I was thinking it was unfair to criticize people for taking shelter during a natural disaster.

But then I remembered this video I saw that came out after 9/11. It was taken inside a shop somewhere in Manhattan, possibly even a deli, I don't remember for sure. The shop proprietor went out and dragged a couple of people inside who were rubbernecking at the big black cloud coming down the street after one of the towers collapsed. He was really loud, brash, even a little mean to these people, demanded they stay inside, and told them not to dare open the door. One of the people, a woman, was complaining that she left all her stuff outside. Then the big cloud came past, and she went into hysterics, thanking the shopkeeper for saving her life.

It wouldn't be fair to compare the two videos, we don't get a clear view of what's going on in and around the checkpoint, there's no audio, and it's not like we see a grandma who fell and couldn't get up lying there while the screeners ran for their lives.

I just think it's ironic.

I've posted upstream about my speculations. But, when all is said & done, the evidence in this video is that the screening clerk staff had no idea what to do during a tornado event at their airport. Somebody needs to be fired, but, I know that's wishful thinking.