Mid-west tornadoes

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt asked President Bush to expedite federal assistance to areas of his state . This, after it is damaged by the supercell storms that hit on Sunday, March 12th.

The weather system killed nine people and injured dozens of others. Hundreds of homes were damaged and a number totally destroyed. The storms also knocked out electric mains power and telephone service in several locations.

According to reports from a number of Newsline listeners, there was at least one ARES voice net and several data operations set up. The data connections are using widely adopted Winlink 2000 protocol. While the voice operations were associated with the search for victims of the storms
the data circuits were and are being used to pass along damage reports from the field to state and county relief officials.

And Missouri is not the only state hard hit. Over the past few days violent weather has stretched from the Great Plains eastward to the Ohio valley. In Indiana the problem is rain and flooding. Water levels are still rising in in the Hoosier state and ham radio volunteers are reported to be on stanbdby in case they are needed.

Also reported to be on stand-by were ham radio emergency coimmunications groups in Oklahoma and Arkansas which were also hit by the severe weather outbreak.

Hams in northern Wisconsin were also on alert as that area began thawing out from 32 inches of snow coming from that same winter weather system - a storm that the National Weather Service says cut a 400 mile long path across the mid-section of the nation.

Source: ARNewsline, reports

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