- Every year, hundreds of Americans are injured or killed during severe weather events.

Severe storms cause billions of dollars in property damage, and often leave families scrambling to find basic necessities.

Tonight, we're gonna help you prepare for severe weather season, and we'll also discuss the devastating wildfires that have plagued Kansans in recent years.

Coming up next on "IGI."

(gentle music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you with support from the Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust, and from the Friends of KTWU.

(upbeat music) - For most Kansans, severe weather is a way of life.

But for the last two years, we've been focused on COVID-19 and staying safe during the pandemic.

It's possible that some of us have become complacent and risk being caught off guard by severe weather events.

Welcome to "IGI."

I'm your host, LaTiffany Obozele.

On today's program, We're gonna talk to local experts about how to prepare for severe weather outbreaks and another threat that's plaguing parts of Kansas, wildfires.

Joining us now to discuss severe weather awareness and preparedness are Chad Omitt, Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the National Weather Service Forecast Office here in Topeka and Dusty Nichols Director of Shawnee County Department of Emergency Management.

Thank you all so much for joining me today on this show.

Okay.

- Thanks for having us.

- Yes.

No problem.

So today we're in the third, year of the pandemic and last year was a relatively quiet year when it came to severe weather in Northeast Kansas.

And we've also had a lot of distractions to keep us not focused on the weather.

And so I think we need a reminder to help ourselves know how we can best get prepared.

So I'm gonna start with you, Chad, how can we stay aware?

- You know, living in Kansas, we have some of the most violent weather on earth, including violent tornadoes.

And so I think it is worthwhile to take a little bit of time and to review the risks that severe weather brings to us here in Kansas and how to reduce those risks.

And one of the things that you talked about is preparedness, which is essentially putting other a plan that really emphasizes sheltering,sheltering options, especially when it comes to tornadoes.

And that's what we talk about a lot this time of year is put together a plan, no matter where you're at at school, at home, your business, that looks at where you're going to go and what you're going to do in the event that a tornado warnings issued.

And so that's one of the things that we emphasize this time of year.

And if you don't know the answer to that question, this is a great time to think about that and put a plan together.

- Okay.

So I'm glad that we're gonna talk to people about how to make a plan.

So how can we stay aware?

What resources do we have for people as they're thinking about getting a plan together?

- Sure.

I, I think there's multiple ways to get any kind of weather information that the key is staying situationally aware of other weather and other things that are going on those risks and hazards that are out there.

But I think each, plan's gonna be a little bit different depending on the family and people have ball games and concerts and whatever else.

So having a communications plan is a key piece of that plan as well, know where your family members are.

And if you're dispersed throughout the county or city, how do you get a hold of them?

So having a communication plan is part of that, but the other part is having a kit in your home, depending on, again, your needs.

If you have medications that need to be kept cold and possibility of losing power.

So there's other associated risks and hazards with weather.

So you can get at power outages, which could cause other issues too.

So making plan is a step by step process.

This is the actual threat that we have to deal with, but these are the follow on threats and then making a plan to build your safety pieces around that.

So each one's different, but there's a lot of resources out there.

www.ready.gov is a good source for that.

- [Tifanny] Okay.

You kind of talked about having your communication systems in place.

Are there radios or broadcast radio stations or TV stations or we're in a digital age where everybody's on their phone?

Are there good apps that people could be using right now as they're getting weather prepared?

- Sure.

- You know, there are, and we've always talked about the traditional methods of media.

that still are some of the most important ways to receive information.

These days, emergency information, commercial radio is still one of the most important television, commercial television.

There's, there's few other ways that you can have the threat sort of visually framed for you of where it is, where it's moving and what you need, need to do about it.

So commercial radio television weather radio is another way that people can receive information from the national weather service, including weather warnings.

And these days there are apps on phones that you can rely on for information as well.

And there is a program called wireless emergency alerts.

You probably have gotten one of those, those sounds on your phone, they do deliver Amber alerts, but they also deliver weather warning messages, including tornado warnings.

And so that can be another way to receive information no matter where you're at on the go.

- If I could take a moment, just to emphasize what Chad was saying about commercial radio listening local.

I know we live in the satellite age of satellite TV, satellite radio, et-cetera.

And to go along with that, if kids are at home playing Xbox and they don't have those things on, cause they're listening to MP3 having an alternate source, like a weather radio or something like that is very key to get the warning.

- Okay.

I know I've been in my car before and I've, if you're listening to like a local radio station, kind of like you get the Amber alerts or the weather alerts, doesn't local radio sometimes do like that static thing where they let you know that you're in a severe weather watch and it tells you the counties .

That you're in for.

- yep - You'll hear the emergency alert bursts or this sounds, it sound like a Duck or... it's very a unique sound.

And so yeah, the commercial radio will sometimes deliver that to you as well.

- Okay.

So Dusty started talking to us about making sure you have a new plan and how important communication is.

What about starting to figure out where you have a shelter or those kinds of things?

Where do you go when you start to get in a severe weather watch?

- Sure.

That is a key part of your plan as well.

There's, there's multiple, important pieces of course, but knowing where you're going to take, take a shelter.

So if you have a basement of course getting underground or the center part of your home, if you don't have a basement in protecting yourself and your family, I just wanna also emphasize if you're in a business or So you're going out shopping, you may not know where that is you very much need to pay attention to the people who work there and they will guide you, or they should be guiding you to where their shelter is to go along with that is no plan is, is done until you've practiced it.

So just because you've written it out and you shared it, you should actually go through the motions and trying it out just to make sure enough people can fit in there or you have the pieces you need, or there's an assumption you've made that's not quite right.

So practice that plan.

- Okay.

So you are talking about planning.

We were talking about something interesting earlier when you get that weather watch, how long do people usually have when you get that weather watch to get prepared?

- Well, if let's just say it's a tornado watch.

So there's a difference between watches and warnings.

The tornado watch is tends to come out hours before storms develop.

And so that's sort of a heads up, Hey, get ready, get set, raise your it situational awareness and start to really pay attention on your surroundings of what's going on.

And then when a warning's issued, that's when you put your plan into action and go to your shelter, wherever that may be.

And so that's the difference between the two.

- Okay And the warning is really when we need to then put our plan into action and get to shelter.

- Okay.

And I think we were talking earlier about when you're having that plan, is it the time to start putting your materials and resources together, or as we're having this conversation and thinking about whether preparedness, should people be doing that in the areas that they decide are gonna be their safety place?

- Yeah.

The best time to a plan and build your kit is when nothing's happening.

You don't wanna wait till the warning comes out and try to pull all this stuff together.

So having it set, ready to go.

And when the warning goes off, the warning is a time for action.

If your warning light comes on in your car, it's time to take an action.

If you hear a sound or an alert, it's time to take an action.

The watch is, you keep an eye on your fuel level.

You keep an eye on your oil level, that kind of thing.

But when that warning light comes on, it's time to take an action.

It's the same thing.

When you hear the warning, take action.

That's not time to run around and try to do maintenance and try to put stuff together.

So absolutely put that stuff together prior to the warning.

- Okay, Chad, so we've kind of been talking about the difference between a weather warning and a weather watch.

Do people need to cancel their plans when they start to hear the warning or the watch?

- Not necessarily the watch.

Now the purpose of the watch is to just get your situational awareness rising to the level where you're starting to really pay attention of what's going on around you.

And we really emphasize the importance of, if you're on the go of using information, that's available on a phone, it can be an app.

It can be a radar app.

There's a lot of sources of radar.

These days.

You don't have to be a meteorologist to interpret it, but it can really be valuable for you in the sense that it can show you where the storms are at and where they're moving and how much time you might have before they get to your location.

And so that's one of the things we really emphasize is important when it comes to personal responsibility is to use those apps that are available so that you can have that information wherever you're at.

You don't have to be home in order to have that information for you.

- Okay.

And Chad, earlier, you were talking about tornadoes, how many tornadoes do we have in a given year in Kansas?

- You know, typically over the last 30 years, there's been about 85 documented tornadoes here in Kansas.

Last two years have been very quiet.

We had 17 in 2020, I think last year we only had 37 documented tornadoes.

So it's been quiet, which is another reason we want people to really start thinking about severe weather season, 'cause chances are, it's not gonna be quiet this season.

- [Tifanny] Okay.

And Dusty, what about you?

Should we just be relying on sirens for tornado warnings?

Are there other signs we can be paying attention to?

- Chad kind of hit on it, having those multiple ways of getting it, whether it's on a cell phone or a smart device, having those weather apps, listening to commercial radio, commercial TV, or local preferably the outdoor will warning system is what we prefer to call it.

It's people refer to it as the tornado sirens, but it's actually for outdoors for those populated areas.

So we have different types of sirens out there, ones that we could talk over, like at Harland park or, anywhere there's outdoor gatherings.

We can talk over and give additional information, but having those outside warning devices, you can't count on those indoors.

'cause like Chad was saying, when you have these winds and hail and everything else, plus the growth of trees that the sound is not gonna make it through your house.

So don't rely on those sirens, especially if you're indoors.

So we highly encourage you to get weather radios and have multiple sources to get that.

- Okay.

I wanna take a minute in turn.

We've talked about the humans and how humans are gonna prepare, but let's talk about pets.

A lot of people have pets in their house.

And so how do we get a plan in place for our pets?

Do we plan our pets too?

- Sure.

Absolutely many pets.

I know my pet is part of my family.

So I want to take care of that pet just as much as anybody else in my family.

So when you're putting those kits together and you're thinking about, what you would need to take to a shelter or for comfort, do the same thing for your pet, have the food and water pot, that's available or a snack, but if they need a blanket or a shiver blanket or a vest or those things that are made for pets, those are smart things to do for your pet.

So take care of your pet.

Like it's part of your family.

- Okay.

And Chad, are there any new changes to our warning practices or technological changes that you'd like to talk about?

- I mentioned the wireless emergency alerts program, which is it's an opt-out program that delivers an alert to your phone.

So your mobile device, wherever you're at in the past, the weather alerts have included tornado warnings, flash flood warnings.

And now we've included high... What I'll call high end severe or thunderstorm warnings, which include whenever we see a storm that's capable of producing 80 mile an hour winds or greater or baseball size tail or larger, we'll also deliver that through a WEA alert on the phone.

And so if you're in that warning, that includes 80 mile hour winds or baseball size tail, you'll get one of these warnings and that's new.

So it's so people hopefully won't see that this year, but they might.

And if they do that's a part of that program.

- Okay.

Chad and Dusty, thank you again for appearing on IGI coming up next.

We'll discuss wildfires with Eric Ward assistant fire management officer with the Kansas forest service.

(upbeat music) - Being prepared is a part of who you are, But it's especially important in the case of a disaster.

It's up to everyone to be informed about possible emergencies in your area and the best responses for your personal circumstances.

There's no one more capable of planning for your situation than you Be informed.

Make a plan, build a kit, get involved, visit ready.gov/my plan.

- When most of us think of wildfires, we often think of the forest fires that often plague the mountainous Western states.

But in recent years, there have been a rash of Prairie fires and the great planes that have burned thousands of acres of grassland killed livestock and even resulted in human casualties.

Joining us now our Eric Ward assistant fire management officer with the Kansas forest service and again, Dusty Nichols from the Shawnee County Department of Emergency Management.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us on IGI.

So I wanna be here.

- Happy to be here.

Oh, thank you.

I'm happy to have you.

So I wanna start with you and have you tell us what is a wildfire?

- Basically a wildfire is anything that's burning vegetation non manmade stuff.

Although they always have the potential to spread into manmade property improvements, infrastructure and so forth.

- Okay.

So we've had wildfires at least two in a row in Northeast Kansas.

Is that unusual?

- No, Kansas has always been among the top states in the country in terms of the number of wildfires, the number of acres that burned.

But what has been unusual is in the last six or so years, we've been seeing a significant increase in the severity, which really follows a nationwide trend.

That's been going on for a number of years now.

- [LeTifanny] And why do you think we're seeing their increased severity?

- A lot of factors play into that.

Climate is a factor.

Weather obviously has a huge impact on wildfires.

Drier conditions.

Wind will make them much worse than the same area burning in mild weather would be human development into areas that used to be primarily wild country and open countryside makes the risk of damage and potentially injury and worse, much more prevalent.

If you have people in the way, a lot more human activity in the country, in the wilderness that leads to more potential for starts as well as higher risk.

So there's a lot of factors that play into it and no single one thing.

That's the cause.

- Okay.

Do plants have an effect on the wildfires that are happening now as well?

- Very much so.

One thing that we've seen a lot in Kansas over the last really 40 to 50 years is a tremendous increase in the amount of Eastern red Cedar, which are a native tree in Kansas.

They're not an invasive species, but they are natively in the Creek beds and stream bottoms and so forth.

And now they're spreading throughout the Prairie.

They burn much hotter and much more difficult to control than grass.

The other thing is the amount of vegetation.

So if we have a year that is a really good growing season, like several of our worst fire years, we've had a tremendous, plenty of rain through the summer and early fall during the growing season.

And then the moisture just ends.

And then we have a really dry fall in winter.

And so we've got a lot of vegetation out there to burn and it's very, very dry and that leads to a really bad fire situation.

- Okay.

And so you kind of talked about the variety of different things that can go into creating these wildfires.

What role does land management or the lack of it play in wildfires?

- That's certainly a big issue.

We've seen a lot of change in land use over the last 20 to 30 years.

A lot of areas that perhaps used to be open farmland ranch land that was very well maintained, has been subdivided, it's become neighborhoods or if not a full scale subdivision, maybe it's got a house every so often that makes it where people are not gonna burn, like they used to.

And so that allows the development of both the Eastern red, Cedar and other kinds of Woody fuels that burn a lot hotter and, and more intensely, we see more absentee land owners in some communities where there's not anybody there taking care of the land.

Like maybe they were, when it was ranch land that was being used for production.

People that are letting their land get grown up, thinking it's creating good deer habitat or other reasons they like the natural break from the neighbors of having trees all around and, and all of that plays a role in, in the fire risk.

- Okay.

Dusty, is this something that you're having to deal with or see with wildfires?

- Oh, absolutely.

In, fact, as Eric indicated the, you know, the risk is out there 'cause we live in Kansas and we have different weather patterns with the droughts and then we have higher fire days than others.

But a lot of the stuff is that we talked about with severe weather also applies knowing the risk, knowing where you live, there are some steps you could take with some land management, even if you're in a, an urban area, you know, cleaning up the leaves or brush that's up against your home, stuff like that.

So if it do land there, if they don't, if they're not there there's nothing to burn.

So taking that fuel away will help protect you and keep you safe.

- Eric, is this only a rural problem?

Or can this happen in urban areas like Topeka.

- It can happen anywhere.

City of Topeka has some wonderful parks throughout town that may not be miles and miles long, but they're full of, of stuff they can burn.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even if a fire starts out in a rural area, it can tend to spread into town.

So just living in town and in and of itself is not necessarily a, a free ride that you're not gonna be at risk.

We saw a, a terrible example of that in late December, it was in Colorado, but in the town of Boulder, which made national news people think of Colorado as forest fires, but that was basically a grass fire that started in the foothills and blew into the town of Boulder and destroyed homes and shopping centers and all kinds of stuff and, and evacuated thousands of people.

And obviously Boulder is a very urban area, but that fire that started at the edge of town, once it moves into town, it just burns house to house, and those blowing embers, again, that Dusty referred to spread the fire to anything that they can ignite.

- Okay.

So we talked about kind of this, not just being a rural area and it being able to happen anywhere.

So in urban areas like Topeka, there's some overgrown properties on the outskirts of towns.

Are those potential fire hazards when we're talking and thinking about wildfires?

- Yeah, I would say so any place that is, is a load of fuel, ready to burn if, if an ignition source happens.

And then again, once you get a, a building involved that creates that much more heat, that many more embers blowing that can ignite the next building and the next.

So once that fire gets a chance to move into town, it can, it can move right along.

And likewise it, if you're in the country, then obviously you're surrounded by flammable vegetation that can create a risk to you.

- Okay.

So what can we do to protect ourselves?

Dusty started talking to us about some ways that we can be prepared, just like we were talking about with severe weather, but what are some ways we can protect ourselves and start to prepare when it comes to wildfires?

- Well, he hit on a number of the highlights and many of the planning aspects of it to having a good notification system.

Exactly the same as for severe weather, making sure you have ways to get notified, making sure you have a plan where if you have to evacuate where you're gonna go, if you'd have asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I would've said there was no reason to evacuate in Kansas because at that time we weren't seeing that kind of fire We are now we're seeing fires for where towns and neighborhoods have to be evacuated.

And we've seen, in December the town of Paradise in north central Kansas severely impacted by a wildfire, tremendous property damage.

So if the order comes to evacuate, it's very important to people.

Listen to that.

That will come from a local fire department or local emergency management agency, local law enforcement, given that order.

And if it comes, none of us can force anybody to leave their home, but it just makes sense to listen, because if you don't evacuate, when you're told by the time you decide, you really should have, it's probably too late and it's very possible.

There's nobody coming.

If you call for help, because everybody is already busy trying to fight the fire and may not be able to get to you.

So if you get that instructions to evacuate, do it, the other part, again, Dusty hit on this, but cleaning up around the house, getting rid of those leaves in the gutter, under the deck, keeping the firewood pile away from the house.

We like to have it real close.

So we don't have to go very far in the winter.

But that's a place for an Ember to land and start a fire that may not even be noticed right away until it has a chance to smolder for a while.

And so anything that can keep that flammable stuff away from the house and away from the garage and the out buildings is going to greatly increase the chance of survival.

Okay.

- And if I may just to kinda add onto what Eric was saying a good way to protect yourself is not just that, but the situational awareness, knowing if you're, if you're in a burn ban, if you're in the county and Shawnee county is a little bit different.

each fire department and district has their own decision makers to do that.

So we don't have a countywide, but some counties in Kansas do have a countywide burn ban.

So know if it's a good day to burn or not and pay attention to that.

There's the website you guys can go to that they have, that you can check on whether it's a high fire day or not.

So definitely having a good situation awareness and whether, and know whether or not to burn or not is a big thing.

Yep.

- Okay.

And we really advocate, don't just check today's weather.

If you wanna burn today, check the weather for the next two or three days, 'cause a number of the fires that have happened.

Somebody burned on a day.

That was really pretty nice weather and, and not a big reason not to, but it's very common for something to stay hot in that burn, whether it's a brush pile or they've burned some pasture land under what there's some embers somewhere that are still smoldering.

And if tomorrow or the next day is going to be hot, dry and windy, there's a good chance for that to get whipped to life.

So check today very carefully, but also look out two or three days and make sure there's not a, a critical fire day coming up.

That might cause what we thought was out to become the next wildfire.

- Okay.

And just for those of us that have never thought about a wildfire and a safety plan, what does that look like?

- Making sure you have room some space around your home that is not highly, flammable making sure you have room for the firefighters to get into your house.

I was a fire chief for 20 years and I had home right next to one of my fire stations that you had to drive down an alley of evergreen trees for several hundred yards to get to the house.

If that was on fire, we could not have gotten to that house to help them.

Making sure that you have that plan to have notification.

You have your emergency kit, you're prepared to evacuate if you need to.

And many of the things that we've did are done in emergency plannings for your severe weather, consider that a base plan.

And you can add your own annex if you will, for wildfires and you can even take it a step further.

And I encourage this.

If you have a barbecue or a burn ring or a fire pit in your backyard, having fire extinguishers nearby and having those things that you can quickly put that out, work finding just over the past couple years in response to these fires, the faster you get on them, the better off it is as far as...

Absolutely.

- Okay.

Well gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of IGI.

That's all the time we have.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, please send us an email@ktwu.org.

If you would like to view this program again or any previous episodes of IGI, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org for IGI I'm LaTiffany Obozele And thank you for watching.

- This program is brought to you with support from the Lewis H. Humphreys charitable trust.

And from the friends of KTWU.