Sounds like you had your hands full!

What/where is the tornado shelter at HSV? (some back-office areas or basement area, not normally open to the public ?)

A few years ago I happened to be on a flight from LAX to MSP; as we started our decent it was obvious we were flying next to a huge t-storm.

Upon landing, you could hear the tornado sirens from inside the aircraft. We do a fast taxi and make our way to the gate.

Inside the terminal it's completely packed (many delayed and canceled flights). There was an announcement that would keep running about the tornado warning and to seek shelter away from glass.

A bit difficult to do at MSP with the design - ok, I guess you could go landside and down to the basement/ground transport area (or over to concourse A/B) -- I was in the F/G area.

About 5% of the people in the terminal were taking the warning seriously and were grouped in the few areas away from windows.

As far as everyone else, it was business as usual. I proceed to the NW lounge - business as usual other than a couple of announcements to stay away from the glass.

Storm was pretty nasty, but it went through and the ramp opened back up an hour later once the lightning subsided.

If they would have evacuated the terminal and forced everyone out (not quite sure where there would be space for everyone) - it would have been ugly, even with all the TSA checkpoints at MSP.

Thankfully my connecting aircraft and crew arrived before the storm -- there were a lot of diversions and cancellations that night.

Right! It's a room right in front of the Elite Travel glass hut. It's marked with a white sign with a little green tornado on it that says tornado shelter (or something similar to that, anyway; seven years here and I haven't ever really looked at the sign). If you go in there, though, you're probably going to wonder ... is going on because it's just a hallway that leads to the kitchen area for the hotel restaurant and the service elevator for the hotel, along with the hotel workers' break room. Another door, about half-way down the hallway, has the same sign on it, and if you open it you are then presented with an area right out of one of the Saw� movies. It's a confining, narrow, steep concrete staircase that spirals down in hard angles, and once you're down there, you're basically left in a dark concrete room that the hotel has almost completely taken over as a laundry room. There's still enough room to legally use it as a storm shelter, I suppose, but it'd be a little odd going down there and you're surrounded by steam cleaners and crap. Pack a hundred people in there (about as much as I would care to try to squeeze in) and things are going to get toasty awfully fast.

The other tornado shelter is on the far side of the building, but it's entirely for airport workers, since it's actually located inside the SIDA, underneath gate three.

Yeah, it wasn't very optional here in HSV when it happened. Public safety rolled through in person and basically told everyone to drop everything and GTFO. The passengers, the gift shop workers, the restaurateurs; everybody.

here ya go HSVTSO Dean...if the tsa won't give you face time, i will http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11573667-post230.html

Years ago, I was connecting through the then-brand new Denver Airport on the second day of operations. I met a friend who was a UA employee at the airport while waiting for my connection. He told me there had been a tornado that had touched down on the airport. An announcement of the tornado and advice to seek shelter in the terminal. Two things happened:

1. The airport officials realized that they had not prepared any tornado procedures; and,

2. Based on the popularity of the movie, Twister, which was running in theaters at that time, many people moved towards the terminal windows to get a good look at the tornado!

Most tornados travel southwest --> northeast. If you're outside and can move in a vehicle, try to get out of the way at a 90-degree angle to the SW/NE line (i.e.: escape either to the SE or NW direction, whicever direction would not cause you to cross the likely path of the cyclone).

At DHN, the only rooms with no windows are our bathrooms. Then again, since it was built by the lowest bidder, we might as well just advise passengers to stick their heads between their legs and...well, you know the rest.

^

Well, they had to evacuate the terminal out of an Abundance of Caution�. Could you imagine what would have happened if a tornado touched down and they hadn't evacuated?

Simple -- the TSA would have said that it was somebody else's responsibility.

Great stand-up routine* about a guy visiting Australia during a cyclone, and the locals keep joking, "Did you bring this weather with you?" His response, "I can't even bring a candy bar into this country, and you think I smuggled in a &*$%# low pressure system?! 'Anything to declare?' 'Hmm, just this tropical cyclone, sir.' "

(*Dylan Moran, maybe?)

A friend who transfered to HSV said her gf picking her up told her about this.

She's not happy about living in HSV right now: her new VW got damaged by the hail--enough for her to file an insurance claim. Don't you know that the local Enterprise office said >60% of their vehicles got damaged so she's gone from a sexy, sporty little VW to......a Ford F-150 crew cab!

F-150s are sexy as hell.

Dean I am glad that it was a false alarm. A couple of years ago a tornado hit my work. I was the sole survivor. (of course I was the only one there at the time but "sole survivor" sounds better than "I was all alone")

That sounds like a lot of excitement. I can feel for you since I once spent a hurricane at the airport. Once the power went out (Surprise! The emergency generators failed to kick on.) we ended up physically searching every carry-on by the light of a portable spotlight set up in front of the escalator while listenening to the maddening beeps coming from the 3 walkthroughs reminding us they were running on battery back up power until they finally (thankfully) died. Then everyone got handwanded. Driving home on empty roads after I finally got cut loose was eerie. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention for the benefit of those who've never transited here, the entire front wall of the terminal, most of the airside wall and large portions of the downstairs ceiling are glass.

Oh yea.
Been there, too. We had tornados nearby (I think it was Christmas Eve 2005) btu caused enough damage to cut power for 2 days. We have no emergency power generators. We had to deal with that WTMD beep as well. I tried everything short of forcing the control panel open and ripping out the battery. Duct tape over the speaker helped a bit.
2 days worth of physical searches was enough for me. I was so happy when the power was turned back on.

We still don't have backup power.