EXAMPLE: Tornado, Grand Island, Nebraska, 1980. Sirens were heard frequently from April through late summer, but their warning value may have been somewhat tempered by a sense of relative invulnerability. (The last time a tornado had hit Grand Island was in 1857, and year after year since that time, those storms that had appeared always veered north of the city.) Sirens did not usually trigger a sense of immediate danger. They were heard during Civil Defense tests, conducted twice each month, and they were heard when funnel clouds had been sighted nearby, funnel clouds that ended up not actually posing a threat to the city. The townspeople seemed to rely primarily on their own weather sense and ability to read environmental clues. The sound of sirens was interpreted not so much as a warning of clear and present danger as it was a signal to watch the skies. Thus, unless conditions looked particularly threatening, the sirens did not generate much alarm. However, on the evening of June 3, they were not heard with the usual complacency. The skies did, on this occasion, look uniquely ominous. Many people turned on the radio, began making personal weather observations, and in general became sensitized to signs of potential danger even before the sirens began to sound. When the sirens began to go off, they were heeded. The result was that, in spite of bearing the full and extended force of 6 twisters that flattened one-fifth of the town (population 40,000), there were only 5 deaths and a relatively small number of injuries. The experience of most persons interviewed after the storm can be summed up in the words “We hear the sirens all the time, but for some reason, [this time] we paid attention.”
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