View full sizeA state trooper examines the damaged school bus that careened off Interstate 565 in 2006.HUNTSVILLE, AL -- The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on the Lee High School bus crash, almost three years after the fatal wreck.
On Nov. 20, 2006, the bus carrying 40 Lee High students nose-dived off an elevated portion of Interstate 565 on to Church Street.
The impact killed four girls: Christine Collier, Nicole Ford, Tanesha Hill, and Chrystal McCrary. The bus was headed to Huntsville Center for Technology, where high school students throughout the city take elective courses.
According to a lawsuit filed by one of the surviving students against the bus service company, a student driver clipped the bus' fender and wheel while trying to pass the bus.
NTSB reports are released after investigations of transportation accidents with the goal of preventing future accidents.
Keith Holloway, a public affairs officer with NTSB, said reports are usually released at least a year after the accidents, but other transportation disasters delayed release of the bus crash report.
Check our breaking news blog later today for an analysis of the report.
View the full report below. If you're having trouble viewing it, you can download the PDF version instead.
The tornado that devastated southeast Huntsville and killed 21 people on Nov. 15 1989 is captured in this picture by a Marshall Space Flight Center meteorologist.HUNTSVILLE, AL -- As dangerous as they are, tornadoes can become even more deadly if decisions are made using bad information.
There are some prevalent myths and misconceptions about what to do as a tornado approaches, and it's time to re-examine them:
Opening one or more windows in your house will minimize damage.
Not true, says David Nadler, a warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Huntsville. If anything, it's going to get you hurt by flying debris or wind damage. You're better off getting away from your windows. Tornadoes pass by within a few seconds, most homes are sufficiently ventilated to deal with the racing winds, and, finally, winds that can destroy or seriously damage a home won't be deterred by an open front window.
Hide under an overpass or bridge.
Again, that's a mistake, Nadler said. While there are times, such as a famous episode in 1991 when a TV crew in Kansas survived after ducking under an overpass, others have not been as lucky. In Moore County, Okla., in May 1999, a woman seeking shelter with her daughter under an overpass was pulled out by the wind and carried to her death. Nadler said that under some conditions, winds can funnel into a smaller area and pick up speed.
Tornadoes do not cross water.
The damage earlier this year in Guntersville included a tornado that crossed the lake before hitting landfall, Nadler said. Tornadoes have crossed even the Mississippi River.
Mobile homes are magnets for tornadoes.
There are several reasons given why there is often damage reported around mobile home parks. A host of reports suggest that tornadoes don't hit mobile homes more often than regular homes, but the damage and death toll tends to be higher in those encounters. The fact is, many mobile homes are not properly secured and can be heavily damaged by the high winds. There is also a proliferation of mobile homes in the Southeast, a tornado-prone region, Nadler said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises not to take refuge in a mobile home during a tornado.
Go to the southwest corner of your home for safety.
That's a long-held assumption based on early writing about tornadoes. Several studies have disproved the theory. A basement is better. Being lower is good, so the lowest floor in your home or office is recommended. And the farther you are from the wind the safer you will be. That means interior rooms like bathrooms or closets are a good choice. A car is not a refuge, and trying to outrun a tornado is a fool's errand. It is also useful to remember that running into the storm to get to a safer place raises the risk of being hit by flying or falling debris, a major source of injury and death in tornadoes.
Rusty Russell, director of Madison County EMA, said it is much smarter to take advantage of improving weather-prediction technology and begin to look for proper shelter during a tornado watch, rather than waiting until a tornado warning.
Rusty Russell, director of Madison County's Emergency Management Agency, said he believes the tornado sirens that failed last spring have been fixed.HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Local emergency responders believe they have solved a problem that caused the countywide tornado warning siren network to fail last spring.
"There have been no more failures," Rusty Russell, executive director of the Huntsville-Madison County Emergency Management Agency, said late last week.
Russell said EMA technicians now believe a radio at one of the 116 sites in Madison County caused the system to lock up and fail on April 3.
After working once that day on an earlier tornado warning, the sirens took three attempts to trigger for a second warning.
A test of the system April 9 failed to duplicate the problem. "It might be we'll never know" the cause, Russell said then.
Since April, however, regularly scheduled maintenance on each site has revealed the probable cause, Russell said Thursday.
Each site is equipped with what is essentially a radio receiver/transmitter. A signal is sent to activate the siren, and the siren sends back a signal that it has activated.
All of those radios are dialed to a certain frequency, and one site radio had "drifted to where it was on the edge of the spectrum" of the notification frequency, Russell said. Eventually, it drifted far enough off-frequency that "the radio was hung up." It failed, and Russell believes that locked up the system.
"That radio was identified and fixed," he said, and "frequency drift tests" were done on every other radio.
Russell said the potential for a repeat signal drift is disappearing as the EMA system switches from analog to digital radios at each site. That switch will be completed in several weeks.
"We're confident we've done everything we could," Russell said.
The tornado sirens are audible in 85 percent of the county's populated areas. They are located in elevated spots on school grounds and other public property.
A day after view of Jones Valley Elementary School after it received a direct hit by the Nov. 15, 1989 tornado.HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Go to the downstairs hallway. Get on your knees and cover your head.
The basics of a tornado drill haven't changed much in Huntsville schools since an F4 twister ripped through Jones Valley Elementary School 20 years ago Sunday.
The big change has come in preparation. Every Huntsville school has a well-rehearsed plan to quickly - but calmly - make it to the safest part of the building.
Every teacher has a bag of first-aid supplies, a flashlight, and other useful items. Teachers are trained to keep meticulous track of their students.
"(The drills have) changed in that it's much more organized and formal," said teacher Patty Moy. "Overall, we are much better prepared (for a tornado)."
She would know. Moy taught first grade at Jones Valley the day the tornado hit. Like many teachers there, she left before the tornado came, but the storm's aftermath left an impression on her.
"If you lived through that ..., you should take (the drills) more seriously," Moy said. She is now a reading coach at the school.
New technology has helped prepare school leaders for severe weather.
Kyle Koski, the longtime safety director for city schools, was at Jones Valley after the tornado. Back then, there was no Internet for up-to-the-moment weather forecasts.
And in 1989, TV stations didn't routinely interrupt shows to report severe weather, Koski said, making it more difficult for parents to decide whether to pick up their kids.
Koski now gets weather reports immediately online, and parents can use the same technology to help make decisions.
But if a tornado is threatening, Koski wants parents to keep their kids at school.
By law, no school in Alabama can keep parents from checking out their kids, Koski said. But during a tornado threat, he said, it's safer to keep kids at the school.
Driving home during a tornado threat is dangerous, he said, and checking kids out during the threat complicates the process of moving kids to the bottom floor.
"That's the worst thing to do," Koski said. "It causes mass confusion."
Schools are generally safer than houses during tornadoes, Koski said. But he added a disclaimer: "If man made it, God can destroy it."
Twenty years after the storm, Jones Valley faculty and students practice tornado drills at least twice a year. They know another tornado is unlikely to destroy their school, but they practice the drills as though it could.
"I think it did affect the culture of the school," Principal Jeanne Greer said of the tornado. "I think there's just a little bit of heightened awareness here that it can happen."
Tornado survivors Sandy McDonald, left, and Debbie Holliday, along with their husbands, Jim McDonald, in blue, and Bill Holliday, talk about the scenes and events 20 years ago.HUNTSVILLE, AL -- For Sandy McDonald, Sundays' tornado remembrances were a chance to reach for the healing she's been seeking for 20 years.
"I keep hoping that this will help, but the pain's always there," said McDonald, who was 27 when the F4 tornado ripped through south Huntsville Nov. 15, 1989.
She had just gotten home from her job on Redstone Arsenal to her apartment at Waterford Square, a few blocks from the intersection of Airport Road and Whitesburg Drive. The storm hit her building, nearly crushing her. She had injuries all over her body, but particularly her legs. Doctors at first thought they would have to amputate one leg, but she was able to keep it and learned to walk again.
McDonald and others who lived through the storm gathered at the Tornado Memorial on the southeast corner of Airport and Whitesburg, next to Faith Presbyterian Church.
A couple of them came in wheelchairs. Many dabbed tears from their eyes as city Councilman Bill Kling asked some 20 people gathered at the memorial to observe a few moments of silence at 4:37 p.m., the time the tornado touched down, and Rev. Frank Broyles said a prayer.
McDonald and Pam Hastie hugged one another after the prayer. Hastie, a longtime resident of south Huntsville, was working for Huntsville Hospital when the tornado hit. She lost a friend, Audrey Hereford, who also lived in Waterford Square. Crews didn't find Hereford's body for a couple of days, Hastie said.
"It's like it was yesterday," she said. "It just doesn't go away."
Jeff Scarborough was a student at Jones Valley Elementary School. His mother picked him up and took him home just 15 minutes before the tornado destroyed the school. He had a friend who wasn't so fortunate; his friend's mother was killed trying to get to the school.
After the ceremony at the memorial, the group joined about 20 other people in the sanctuary at Trinity United Methodist Church, much of which was leveled in the tornado.
Several in attendance shared their memories.
"I had tornadoes chasing me in my dreams for years," said Lisa Adamson, a retired paramedic who worked for HEMSI and helped with rescue and recovery efforts.
Ellen Cozelos, who wrote a book, "Into the Valley of the Shadow," telling stories of survival from the storm, said the tornado "was the worst of times," but it brought out the best in Huntsville residents, who pulled together to help those hurt by the storm.
"We truly knew what it meant to be a Huntsvillian," she said. "No one should have to face what we face - our own mortality - but we didn't face it alone."
Debbie Holliday, who taught at Challenger Middle School in 1989 and now teaches at Jones Valley Elementary, urged those at the memorial service to use their memories to remind others about the importance of tornado awareness.
"When you hear people complain about the TV weather ... and being overprotective," she said, "tell them if we had known (about the tornado) sooner, there might have been some lives saved."
See more 20th anniversary memories from people who survived the 1989 tornado.
GUNTERSVILLE, AL -- Two men were killed in a car crash in Guntersville Friday afternoon.
Police say 25-year-old Jonathon Corley Pendleton of Brewton and 23-year-old Sean Christopher Pendleton of Guntersville were killed at the scene when the Mazda RX-8 they were riding in crashed into a Ford Ranger truck.
Jonathon Pendleton was driving the car on Sunset Drive near Patterson Street when it hit the truck, according to a police report. The accident occurred just after noon Friday, police said.
A second passenger in the car, Eugene Adams, was treated at the scene and taken to Huntsville Hospital. A hospital spokeswoman said he was not in the hospital as of Saturday evening.
The driver of the truck, Otha Harbin Sr., no age given, was taken by ambulance to Huntsville Hospital and was listed in good condition Saturday night.
Police say Jonathon Pendleton appeared to be speeding and lost control on a curve just south of Patterson Street.
The car involved in the accident Tuesday on I-565 westbound just west of the offramp to Redstone Arsenal's Gate 9.HUNTSVILLE, AL - A Pinson man who died Tuesday in a wreck on rain-slick Interstate 565 crashed into a flat-bed pickup truck that was stopped on the freeway, a witness and police said Thursday.
Police were not immediately able to confirm other motorists made 911 calls to warn about the hazard or whether an officer might have been able to reached the stalled truck before the wreck.
Gary Robert McClaran, 59, of Pinson died at the scene of the wreck, which happened about 1:15 p.m. in the westbound lanes of I-565, where the Pioneer Roofing company truck was stopped.
Mark DeVirgilio of Huntsville said he called 911 to report the stalled truck. He avoided it, but McClaran didn't.
"I drove by about 1 p.m., and it was pouring rain," said DeVirgilio. "It was in the center lane and stopped in the middle of the freeway.
"There were no lights and no flashers," he said. "As I drove around it, the headlamps were on."
Bill Mears, co-owner of Pioneer Roofing, said the truck, a late '80s model Ford F350, was in good condition before the wreck. As far as he knew, the flashers and lights were working fine.
"We check the lights on those trucks almost daily," Mears said. "Because they're on (work) sites, they're always getting knocked out."
DeVirgilio said he's a conservative driver and was going about 50 to 55 mph when he came upon the truck. The left lane was free for him to move over, drive around the truck and call police.
"I called 911, and the operator said several people had called it in," he said.
Huntsville police Sgt. Mark Roberts confirmed the truck was stalled in the highway, but he didn't know the time line of 911 calls nor the response time. He didn't know if the truck was using flashers.
After the wreck, DeVirgilio drove back by the accident site, near the Redstone Arsenal Gate 9 and Research Park Boulevard exits.
"I knew by the looks of it what had happened," he said.
Mears said the driver of the truck had tried to move into the far right lane and get off the road when the vehicle started acting up, but he couldn't because of the heavy traffic.
The driver of the truck has been an employee of Mears for almost 35 years.
"He's a good man," Mears said. "He was all tore up."
HUNTSVILLE, AL - A 26-year-old New Market woman is recovering from injuries suffered Thursday afternoon in a motorcycle accident on Moore's Mill Road.
Don Webster, Chief operating officer for HEMSI says Rachael Jarman suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries when her motor scooter collided with another vehicle on Moore's Mill Road near Ware Drive about 2:41 p.m.
Jarman was taken to Huntsville Hospital suffering facial trauma and possible broken bones.
HUNTSVILLE, AL. - Huntsville Police and HEMSI paramedics are responding to a had on collision reported at the intersection of Franklin Street and Governor's Drive.
Initial reports indicated that the drivers might be trapped but as the first responders arrived at the scene they reported no one trapped.
The extent of injuries are not immediately known.
Don Kennedy and Sons will be moving a home similar to this one at 9 a.m. today.HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Heavy rain Tuesday forced Don Kennedy and Sons House Moving Co. to change its plans to move a home from Erskine Street near UAH to Jones Street in northwest Huntsville.
The move, which begins at 9 a.m., will affect traffic along Lakeside Drive, South Loop Road, Holmes Avenue, Jordan Lane, Research Park Boulevard, Blake Bottom Road and Indian Creek Road for about two hours this morning.
Movers will start their work at 610 Erskine St., with the home's destination at 119 Jones St. Unfavorable weather could cause the move to be delayed or rescheduled again.
See the map below for a detailed view of the route.
Shelby Center for Science and Technology at UAH
HUNTSVILLE, AL - This week's packing list for University of Alabama in Huntsville weather researchers: T-shirt, sandals, parka, snow boots.
The duffle-bag smashup came from UAH's plans to study both Tropical Storm Ida and a potentially snowy cyclone, all in one week.
The two storms were 1,500 miles apart, but the professor leading UAH's severe weather research team said they could have similarities.
"By the time it comes ashore, Ida might have a cool eye at its center," atmospheric science professor Dr. Kevin Knupp theorized before landfall. "Typically, the transition from warm to cool happens inland or when hurricanes are blown further north in the Atlantic, but the late-season cooler air is driving Ida's transition at landfall."
Ida made landfall early Tuesday as a tropical storm but, even though no longer a hurricane, it had characteristics Knupp's team was looking for.
"Sure enough, Ida developed both a well-defined warm front and a well-defined cold front," Knupp said by e-mail Tuesday, "and these fronts were well-sampled by our instrumentation. It appeared that much of the 5 inches of rain that we sampled near Gulf Shores was triggered by a warm frontal boundary that remained near the coast for an extended time period."
The distinct warmer and cooler areas gave Ida a similar structure to a low-pressure system developing between Iowa and Minneapolis this week. The UAH team will study it late this week.
In these "mid-latitude" cyclones (or low-pressure systems), warmer air is pulled up from the south. It rises as it circles the low-pressure center.
Researchers want to know if that rising motion contributes to the heavy rain and snow associated with the systems, whether they are land-falling hurricanes and tropical storms or northern low-pressure systems.
UAH's team has a portable weather research center including two Doppler radar units. IDA was the 10th hurricane/tropical storm UAH has studied.
After Ida passed, Knupp's team began moving back north to Huntsville to refuel, rest and get ready for the northern part of their big weather week.