DBWI: F-5 Tornado doesn't hit Columbus, Ohio.

OOC: Hi fellas. Thought I might do a weather related DBWI for once. POD: March 1, 2003.

IC: Well, it's been about ten years since the occurrence of the deadliest tornado since 1953's Waco, TX event as I'm sure you'll remember.

On March 10th, 2003, 46 tornadoes occurred in an unusual early-season outbreak that stretched across Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, killing 98 people. The worst of the tornadoes, was the F-5 tornado that levelled much of Columbus, OH at around 3:45 in the afternoon, causing 72 of the known fatalities that day; Columbus is still recovering today.

President Bush was roundly criticized for his very poor handling of the tornado's aftermath, and this and the Iraq fiasco contributed heavily to his losing the '04 elections to John Kerry and Vice-President Howard Dean(1st term. 2nd term was Barack H. Obama)....and the Romney/Palin tickey in '08 after they had the nerve to praise Dubya's actions after 3/10.

Without the 3/10 Tornadoes, Would Bush have won a second term? Could Charlie Crist still have run, and won, on an Indie ticket, with Lincoln Chafee in 2012? An would Iraq have lasted longer, and OBL survived for a while yet, instead of dying in 2006?

I'm interested to hear your opinions. :)
 
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I would hate to speculate beyond my expertise, but I might be willing to go as far as to reckon that good ol' Dubya will win his second term. Kerry and Dean never seemed to click with the public and GWB always had this sort of country boy charm about him.

Now maybe he still loses the election on the Iraq issue. It's very possible. Hell, considering the way he was crushed in Ohio, it would be hard to imagine any Buckeye voting for Bush regardless of twisters.
 

nbcman

Donor
OOC: It would be difficult for a 2 mile wide swath from an F5 tornado (at best) to devastate a city of over 200 square miles. If it did, there would be far more than 72 fatalities from striking a city whose population is almost 800,000 with a total metropolitan population of over 1.8 million. A single tornado can't pack the punch that you are proposing with the low number of casualties.
 
This did encourage more funding on emergency preparedness. The community storm shelters did save lives in Greensburg, Kansas and the 2008 Super Tuesday Outbreak. The new building standards helped save lives in various other storm situations. It's fair to say that Cap and Trade wouldn't have happened were it not for greater weather awareness. In addition, with a greater emphasis on weather awareness, the Shuttle II program wouldn't have been put into place.
And I wouldn't have a bachelor's degree. The tuition grants given to emergency responders (I qualify for basic tuition aid, as a member of CAP) helped pay for my college and are helping pay for my Master's in Library Science.
 
I would hate to speculate beyond my expertise, but I might be willing to go as far as to reckon that good ol' Dubya will win his second term. Kerry and Dean never seemed to click with the public and GWB always had this sort of country boy charm about him.

Now maybe he still loses the election on the Iraq issue. It's very possible. Hell, considering the way he was crushed in Ohio, it would be hard to imagine any Buckeye voting for Bush regardless of twisters.

It might be possible, I suppose. Ironically, Kerry actually won his second term in '08 because of a couple of natural disasters; namely, Hurricane Katrina in '05, and Gustav wrecking much of Charleston, S.C., in '08.

OOC: It would be difficult for a 2 mile wide swath from an F5 tornado (at best) to devastate a city of over 200 square miles. If it did, there would be far more than 72 fatalities from striking a city whose population is almost 800,000 with a total metropolitan population of over 1.8 million. A single tornado can't pack the punch that you are proposing with the low number of casualties.

OOC/IC: Yeah, I guess you got a point.....poor wording on my part. :eek:

This did encourage more funding on emergency preparedness. The community storm shelters did save lives in Greensburg, Kansas and the 2008 Super Tuesday Outbreak. The new building standards helped save lives in various other storm situations. It's fair to say that Cap and Trade wouldn't have happened were it not for greater weather awareness. In addition, with a greater emphasis on weather awareness, the Shuttle II program wouldn't have been put into place.
And I wouldn't have a bachelor's degree. The tuition grants given to emergency responders (I qualify for basic tuition aid, as a member of CAP) helped pay for my college and are helping pay for my Master's in Library Science.

Yep. This practice ended up saving a lot of lives here in North Texas during the June 26, 2010 outbreak; an EF-5(F-4 on the old scale, albeit a high-end one) ended up trashing a huge chunk of Plano in Collin County, but with the 38 deaths that did occur, it coulda been twice as bad where it not for the community storm shelters and better warnings, as that tornado was still a low end EF-5 when it hit the densest part of town(62 deaths in all that day).

OOC: This didn't actually happen IOTL, btw.

I think the worst part about it was that it caused the Hoover Reservoir to drain.

If you thought that was bad, you should have seen what it did to the north end of Downtown. Not only did the tornado peak at 265 mph at one point, but it happened right between the Arena District and Short North, right over I-670(that contributed to over 2,000 of the 4,500 serious injuries and 29 of the deaths that afternoon, and that was with a 20-minute lead time, too.).
 
In terms of historical outcomes, would the United States have signed the Kyoto Protocols in 2005, without the aftermath of the F-5 tornado. It certainly helped that it was around the same time Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was released in theaters.....
 
In terms of historical outcomes, would the United States have signed the Kyoto Protocols in 2005, without the aftermath of the F-5 tornado. It certainly helped that it was around the same time Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was released in theaters.....

That's probably true to a point, I think. The extreme cold wave that happened in the winter of 2009-2010 here in North America(brrrr.....can you imagine? Here in Dallas, we spent two weeks with high temperatures never getting out of the teens!) probably helped along the successor treaty, too, as did the 2011 Super Outbreak.
 
Well, for one thing, there might be something resembling a viable Republican party in Ohio now. The botched Federal response combined with some state level mishandling and the GOP Coingate scandals pretty much wiped out the Ohio GOP in 2006, just as the state was Bush's Waterloo in '04. Governor Strickland and the other Democrats on the Apportionment Board were just ruthless with the GOP in redistricting after 2010 with both the Congressional seats and with the State Senate and General Assembly. Given how gerrymandered the districts are, it will be nearly 10 years before the GOP has even a shot at redrawing the maps. In the interim, the state's controlled from top to bottom by Democrats, which hadn't been the case for years. There's some talk that former Congressman John Kasich might have a shot at winning the Governor's mansion in 2014, but I really have my doubts. There are a number of attractive Dem candidates to replace Strickland, who's actually going to leave office a popular governor and who took a lot of people by surprise by not running for President in 2012.
 
Well, on the upside those are old style Conservative Democrats in Ohio. Folks there were not going to vote every ex hippie or former SDS organizer that ran in the primaries. Very few of them were really very far left of center. I expect more than a few will drift across party lines, as have several already.

The economic revival in Ohio has been a mixed bag. The stock market decline and home mortage crisis of 2008-09 had its effect. There were of course folks who claimed excessive regulation held back development, but the "Central Development" scandal suggests the regulations were not too effective in some sectors. Bottom line is you cant expect to recapitolize a multi billion dollar loss in infrastructure and commercial plant in a decade or less. Katrinas aftermaths shows us some contrasts & counter point to Ohios recovery.

Now if we could just figure out what to do about Detroit :confused:
 
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