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Subscribe to RSSA father and his two young daughters were among six killed when dozens of tornadoes ripped across the Central and Southern Plains in the early hours of Sunday.
Relatives told NBC affiliate KFOR TV that Frank Hobbie and his daughters, Faith, 5, and Kelley, 7, were killed when a powerful tornado destroyed their mobile home park in Woodward, Okla.
“They were grandma and grandpa’s girls and it’s just going to be hard without them and their daddy; he was a good daddy,” said Shelly Hobbie, Frank Hobbie’s stepmother.
She said her grandson, Ty, was the only one who survived. The infant suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to Texas.
“We’re all devastated,” Hobbie said.
One of the first to search the area was a man who found one of the girls under a destroyed trailer. "She was still holding her baby doll," Courtney Glitch told KFOR.
Some storm sirens in the town failed to sound after a tower used to activate the warning system was damaged by lightning. But others near the mobile home park said they had heard a siren.
However, residents and officials in at least one of the affected states credited days of urgent warnings from forecasters for saving lives.
Two other victims in the nearby town of Tangiers – a man named by the Oklahoma state medical examiner's office as Darren Juul, and an unidentified 10-year-old girl – were also killed in the storm.
And a man who had been hospitalized with critical injuries died early Monday.
Multiple injured residents were also transported to area hospitals.
The storms also left thousands without power in Kansas, hit an aircraft fuselage production facility, and damaged up to 90 percent of homes and buildings in a small Iowa town. The governors of Kansas and Oklahoma declared states of emergency.
The National Weather Service website listed only one tornado warning on Monday morning, for southeastern San Patricio county in south-central Texas, however there were high wind warnings in effect for parts of South Dakota, with gusts of up to 45 mph.
The weekend storms were part of an exceptionally strong system tracked by the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., which specializes in tornado forecasting. Before the weekend, the center took the unusual step of warning people more than 24 hours in advance of a possible "high-end, life-threatening event."
"We can't do this with every event," said the center's Ken Miller, noting that many storm systems are not as easy to predict.
Miller said he was pleased the warnings were heeded.
"We measure our success by how the public reacts," he said. "Do they take precautions seriously and act on them?"
Dire language of warnings
In south-central Kansas, Sedgwick County Emergency Management Director Randy Duncan credited the dire language of the warnings with saving lives.
"People become used to those warnings. That is a dangerous complacency," Duncan said. "We need to break through the clutter of everyday noise to get people's attention."
Woodward city manager Alan Riffel told CNN that all the missing people had been accounted for, but 89 homes and 13 businesses had been destroyed.
"It's remarkable we didn't have more loss of life," Governor Mary Fallin told a news conference, saying many Woodward residents had either gone to sleep or dropped their guard after an earlier series of storms swept through the area.
She spoke to several whose homes were struck, including a man who said he was asleep on his sofa with his dog when the tornado hit, depositing them unhurt in the backyard.
Orlin Wagner / AP
Storms spawned dangerous twisters from northern Nebraska through southern Oklahoma.
A tornado that struck Woodward in April 1947 still ranks as the deadliest in Oklahoma history, with 116 people killed, according to the National Weather Service.
In tiny Thurman, Iowa, population 250, some 75 to 90 percent of the town's buildings and homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm, Fremont County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Crecelius said. Only minor injuries were reported.
The U.S. tornado season started early this year, with twisters already blamed for 62 deaths in 2012 in the Midwest and South, raising concerns that this year would be a repeat of 2011, the deadliest tornado year in nearly a century.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
Maybe it's time to go back to SOD!
Forget your Guns! Grab a SHOVEL!
What the hell is the matter with YOU?
I am so sorry for their loss and the loss of those small children. However, you had all kinds of notice. Why on earth didn't he stay at a friends house that night with the little ones? Even a motel? I live in a mobile home in Florida and we don't have a shelter on property. When we know there is a potential for tornadoes, high winds or a hurricane, we're out of here.
You know ... the old folks who settled this part of the world (among them my great-grandparents and grandparents who settled an area just south of Woodward) built a storm cellar first, then the barn and paddocks, THEN they built a house.
The had proper respect for what these tornados could do. People have become too complacent and too certain they are so special nothing can happen.
Originally they were root cellars and served a dual purpose during thuderstorms. Build root cellar first to house yourself until you get your barn, paddocks and fields completed, then build your home.
These are not the dark ages. Every year after year we see these stories. Tornadoes & Hurricanes come back every year. Why do we still build houses from wood, cardboard, paper and plastic that only protects against sun, rain & snow ?
My guess is going to be money.
My heart and prayers go out to all those affected. No one should have perished. A mobile home park is the last place you want to be when a storm is approaching, of any kind, tornado or not.
I used to think that, too, about mobile homes being prone to being hit by tornadoes. But lately, I noticed that even the best houses with solid foundation were uprooted by the tornadoes!
Even snowstorms?
Here in my neighborhood, we are so stupid that when a siren go off to warn us, we go out instead and look for it. Not because we want to take pictures, but to see where it is....... I mean the whole neighborhood would be outside scanning the skies!!
You saiid "we." Does that include yourself?
Yes, Watermoon, that includes me.
I live in Norman, OK. We had strong winds all day Saturday. Absolutely no storms. This tornado hit Woodward at 12 in the morning. Did I mention no warning? And they were probably sound asleep. Know your facts before you automatically start trashing people.
Where I live here in central Texas we don't have basements, the ground is just too hard, you'd have to actually use explosives and blow holes in the ground to try and put in basements, it's just not cost effective.
Thoughts and prayers to all.
But when will mr grover, the gop, & the rushbo say that there is global warming and that co2 is the cause. I don't know. Never. They are the grand oil party to the core. But hey, it's 91 degrees in boston today where they run the marathon. They choose the day because it's soooo cool on they day people need to run 26 miles. But no. It's the first day of spring and already 91 degrees. It's time to put the blame where it belongs. On the grand oil party, mr grover, & the rushbo.
They are not idiots and are part of the growing majority that knows that global warming is a scam to redistribute wealth and nothing more! NASA has even joined this chorus - or didn't NBC mention that to you poor lemmings that get all the censored news that the liberal billionaire media moguls think you are allowed to know?
OK, if all of you who believed in your mythological god had ANY proof he existed I would empathize with you. But sadly, you don't. Your silly bible, or koran or anything Joseph Smith babbled about is NOT proof of any gods existence.
Instead, you choose to ignore decades of hard empirical data supporting global warming and these larger, more frequent tornadoes. Some of you even choose to give your church money to build a bigger, more ornate temple, or church. Some of you even export your phony religious beliefs to third world countries, where war will follow once various religions take hold.
And you wonder why your trailer blew away. . .
First day of spring was almost a month ago, Marshal.
So far, still no comment from Obama or the White House. He has lots to say about passing a Buffett Rule of "fairness" to tax the rich even more while assuring that his voting base pays nothing - 47% pay no income tax at all. He can comment about the secret service guys having prostitutes in their rooms. But not a word about this devastation and loss of life. And where is the media spotlight on the this? Where is FEMA? Let them get to New Orleans 36 hours after the event and it is national news for weeks claiming that Bush hates Blacks? Does that mean that Obama hates whites since he is paying no attention to this crisis - even as he did not do so for the tornadoes that struck the South the past two years?
Why should Obama comment on EVERY death in America? You need to get your information straight.
Why do you think this is the duty of the President? I think you may have an unhealthy fixation on the man.
FEMA is there. Once a disaster is declared, they move in. We had floods last fall in Central PA and FEMA was there even though it wasn't national news.
"...a man who found one of the girls under a destroyed trailer..." So I assume they lived in a trailer park. What percent of tornado deaths and how many per year occur to people who live in trailers and thus can't seek reasonable shelter?
Perhaps there should be laws that if you live in a trailer in a tornado zone you're required to have a below ground shelter with easy access near the trailer door with building requirements that minimize the cost by allowing minimal walls and floor but require strong doors and strong walls below ground to the frost line (the normal lowest distance below ground that freezes in the winter, typically 2-3 feet) with no above-ground vertical parts to catch the wind.
There have been several fatalities in well built custom brick homes that were leveled by tornadoes. Ask the folks in Joplin, MO. Ask the staff at St Mary's (brick) hospital that was also destroyed.
The_Mick, are you the third little pig?
What bothers me in the subject of this article is that they mention "Good Daddy" like most daddy's out there are bad fathers! Would you ever see an article where it says: Good Mother and child dies... etc.. No, they would leave out "Good". Society assumes that mothers are naturally good, fathers not so much.. Family Law works the same way and that is a great shame.
Hmmm... I did not make that giant leap like you did. Maybe you are too invested in what you think you know.
Lighten up a bit man. You are reading in between the lines a bit too much. This good daddy and his children are deceased. May they rest in peace.
Peter, "good daddy" was a quote from his step-mother used to describe him, not the author's commentary on bad fathers.
It is mostly the poor that are affected by natural disasters.. It's not like people living in trailers don't want a basement, but get a clue, they are poor.. Look at Hurricane Katrina, Haiti, etc etc.. I don't think is God pooring out judgement, it is us not doing what we are supposed to do.. Help those in need.. I have a hard time believing that people choose to be poor
Sad to hear. But Midwesterners are retards for giving up storm shelters over the decades in favor of stand-up, matchstick housing without even so much as the stereotypical 'ditch to duck into'.
It is statistically proven that the poor suffer the most from natural disasters.. Hence, people living in trailers, and yet there a comedians that joke about this.. It's not that they did not want a basement, it is that they do not have the money or somewhere else to go.. Look at Katrina, Haitia, etc etc.. I don't believe God is casting judgement, I think we need to do our due diligence and help those in need
I don't understand why trailer parks don't dig a large underground bunker for it's residents. Or two or three if it's a big park. At least if they have warning they would have a place to go..
My condolences to the family.
I read somewhere about a guy that sells these pre-fab bunkers to be installed underground and accessed from a hallway trap door in the floor by a ladder so you wouldn't have to go outside to a shelter. It was just big enough for 3 or 4 people and is meant for temporary shelter during a storm. It was specifically designed for trailers / modular homes and was cheaper than a concrete bunker. Check it out.
That would be good also Lorinda. But it seems like it would be cheaper and easy enough to have a large shelter for trailer parks. Anyway. seems like there should be some sort of shelter.
Except that records show that the number of violent tornadoes went down for the past 30 years. The same 30 years that were warming. Oops.
1957, 65, 71, 73 and 74 all had more violent tornadoes than 2011. No year from 1975 to 2010 had numbers anywhere close to in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image44.png
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/image.png
Even tropical cyclone numbers went down for those 30 years of warming.
Now that the Earth is returning to the cooling half of a natural 60 year warming/cooling cycle that might change. It is cold air coming into contact with warm air that fuels storms and tornadoes. Warming was our friend.
economy... The internet messes with peoples heads. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, we didn't have instant media . People don't realize that this is common. We hear about this stuff instantly. In past decades we never heard of most of it. People think this is major, when it is actually just another day.
why do people continue to live in trailers in tornado areas, 90 percent of the people who die in tornado's do.
So Debby. Do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to help these people EACH buy a house??? And besides. Houses get demolished too.
It isn't that expensive to build storm shelters. Remember Dorothy's aunt and uncle in the Wizard of Oz?? Even in Depression Kansas, they were smart enough to have one.
Almost everyone has a cellphone, and most people pay attention to it. It is high time that we created a nationwide cellphone alert system to warn people about these deadly storms. People would sign up at no charge to be alerted in case of these storms. - RC
(Selah?) - RC
That would be okay except for one thing... They would sell all of the numbers to telemarketers... I would never let them have my cell number. Few people have my number and I don't want anyone to have it. there are plenty enough alerts in place already.
Heartbreaking!
This Dad and his two Daughters are in the arms of God now. Lets pray for their salvation, and lets pray the remaining family takes comfort in spiritual belief. For those who believe in God lets pray for those who are empty of faith.
Nice way to attack people who don't believe in your faith... We are not empty. We are very full.Full of love for the family. These people are in the arms of love.
Why are homes allowed to be built in tornado-prone areas with no basements or no storm cellars? Even mobile homes should have storm shelters.
I agree yank. They should have storm shelters. I don't get the reasoning on why they don't.
Shame on some of you idiots for turning this into a political debate. "red" states, "blue" states..who gives a flip. It was a tornado. Keep your politics out of the discussion.
My condolences to the families affected...can't imagine the fear those poor kids experienced. As a father my heart goes out to them.
And yes...trailer parks in 'tornado prone' areas should have underground shelters...seems like common sense to me.
Nice way to end this discussion jay. I also feel for the families and can't imagine losing my children in a tornado. But to somewhat defend the posters in this discussion...I do think that most of them have hearts and really do feel sympathy for the victims and families. This is just a way for people to vent. You know how it goes...when something goes wrong or something tragic happens, always easier to blame someone else. You know I firmly believe that trailer parks should have tornado shelters also but who is to enforce this? Is it time for our government to step in on this issue? I mean, I have a problem with my kids getting on a school bus with no seatbelts, so I choose to not let them ride in them. Off the beaten path a bit, but same idea.