Dallas-Ft Worth Area Raked by Massive Tornado Outbreak

Funnel cloud touching down near a residential area south of Dallas, TX on April 3rd. AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Parrish Velasco

The Dallas Ft Worth Metroplex was struck by a series of tornadoes that moved through heavily populated suburbs on Tuesday, blocking streets and highways with fallen trees and light poles while tossing around big rigs as though they were plastic bags in a stiff breeze. Funnel clouds were confirmed to have touched down as close as five miles from downtown Dallas.

BURLESON, Texas – Tornadoes raked the Dallas area Tuesday, crumbling a wing of a nursing home, peeling roofs from dozens of homes and spiraling big-rig trailers into the air like footballs. More than a dozen injuries were reported.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport canceled hundreds of flights and diverted others heading its way. Among the most stunning video was an industrial section of Dallas, where rows of empty tractor-trailers crumpled like soda cans littered a parking lot.

"The officers were watching the tornadoes form and drop," Kennedale police Chief Tommy Williams said. "It was pretty active for a while."

The confirmed tornadoes touched down near Royce City and Silver Springs, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop

The tornado also tore through a regional operations center for Wisconsin-based trucking company Schneider National, tossing trailers and big rigs around like they were Matchbox toys.



In addition to shearing the roofs off of area homes and launching parked cars into apartment buildings, one of the tornadoes reportedly collapsed one wing of an Arlington, TX nursing home while other twisters in the area had near-misses with a Flying J Trucks Stop, a schoolhouse and Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.


Ranger's minor league catcher Zach Zaneski and 3rd baseman Mike Olt were inside the ballpark for the near-miss. Zaneski used his cell phone camera to film the winds ripping the tarp off the field before he and other Ranger personnel retreated further into the ballpark. Although Zaneski didn't have a twitter account, Rangers catcher Mike Napoli circulated the amateur video from his twitter account.

American Airlines cancelled all flights out of nearby DFW airport- one of the airline's primary hubs. At nearby Love Field in Dallas, Southwest Airlines suspended all service. Even after the storms had passed, airlines in the region halted all flights so that damage to aircraft and other equipment from falling hail could be assessed.

Remarkably, there have not been any reports of fatalities from the Tuesday afternoon onslaught of twisters, although at least a dozen people have been reported injured.

Ten Years Later

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and United Flight 93 crashing in a field in Shanksville, PA after passengers fought with hijackers to retake the aircraft.

It seems difficult to believe that some kids in grade school at the time of the attacks are now old enough to go to college or join the military

The terrorist assault on the United States were preceded by an attack on Afghan Mujaheddin leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, viewed by the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies as the last cohesive group standing in the way of the Taliban taking complete control of Afghanistan. Two days prior to th 9/11 attacks, the veteran Afghan fighter was killed by two suicide bombers posing as a camera crew preparing to interview him.

Massoud's death in a nation wracked by more than two decades of conflict half a world away made little, if any, news in the USA at the time. However, the Taliban's ascendancy to power and their autocratic, fundamentalist rule was very disconcerting to anybody that was even paying the slightest bit of attention.

I distinctly remember a conversation with my father about a week before the 9/11 attacks. My grandfather was from the generation that could remember exactly where they were when they heard that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. My father was from the generation that could remember what they were doing when they got the news when President Kennedy was shot. So what did that leave my generation? The space shuttle Challenger disaster? The Oklahoma City bombing?

When I went to bed the night of September 10th, 2001, my biggest concern was that I had wasted a few hours watching a rather mediocre Monday Night Football game between the Denver Broncos and New York Giants. As I mentioned last year, that all changed in the bloodiest possible manner in less than 12 hours.



And lest we forget, this is how news of the atrocity was met among the parts of the Arab Street.



Although I was several states away and literally slept through the attacks, I was in New York City several weeks after the attacks. From a distance, the Manhattan skyline looked fractured and vacant without the two iconic towers there. I felt compelled to go and see what I could of Ground Zero for myself.

Washington DC Area Firefighters try to get inferno at Pentagon under control after Flight 77 struck the building.

It seemed pretty nondescript up close- acres of debris with floodlights glaring down on the recovery site for volunteers and workers as the days got shorter. The site was surrounded by some barriers and chain link fences, many of them adorned with faded 'MISSING' posters, wilted bouquets and burned out votive candles. One of the fliers struck me as especially poignant- it was from a bagpipe player who was offering his services for free for funerals of those killed in the attacks. Even if only a fraction of the victims loved ones took him up on his offer, the piper who put up the flier would've been quite busy.

On the way to and from the barrier around Ground Zero, one could see smoke lazily drifting up from grates along the sidewalk a few blocks away. Failing to appreciate the enormity of the original WTC site, it eventually dawned on me that these were smaller, isolated fires that had been smoldering underground since the twin towers collapsed. The sickly-sweet smell from the vents was mixed in with the smell of peanuts from a streetside vendor at one corner.

9/11 Tributes Past- Tribute in Light

Even across town from Ground Zero, the walkway into Grand Central station had a massive bulletin board with 'MISSING' posters- this time they were protected from the elements. The City that Never Sleeps had managed to brush itself off and resume a semblance of normalcy, but there was an almost palpable undercurrent of sorrow and uncertainty to go with the stoicism.

[Please note that I'm not trying to make this all about "me me me", just attempting to relate my firsthand but extremely limited experiences pertaining to 9/11 -NANESB!]

I mentioned this last year, but it bears repeating for as long as my fingers can find the keyboard. It's also important to avoid sugar-coating the events of September 11, 2001, such as many in the entertainment industry referring to it in neutral terms like 'tragedy' or 'disaster'. No doubt the end result is tragic, but the Towers didn't collapse in a stiff breeze. The Pentagon didn't get that chunk torn out of due to a ruptured water main. Flight 93 didn't crash in a field in Western Pennsylvania because a bird got sucked into the engine. These were calculated, meticulously planned acts of mass murder by muslim extremists- to gloss over that or say otherwise is a piss-poor attempt at re-writing history.

This is what so many mean when they say 'NEVER FORGET'.

On the plus side, this will be the first anniversary of September 11th without Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden (may he rot in hell), who was killed in a Navy SEAL raid on his Pakistani compound in May.

September 11, 2001- Nine Years Later.

This would actually be my first 9/11 observance of any kind since I started up this blog. There are those out there who are much better at this sort thing than I am, but I'll do my best nonetheless. Everybody seems to have their own story to tell about where they were that day. Mine is particularly anticlimactic- I literally slept through the whole thing since I had the day off and slept in and was functioning on West Coast time. On top of that, I decided to busy myself with some paperwork for awhile before I even bothered turning on a TV, radio or computer. On the radio, the 'Morning Zoo' FM DJs were solemnly trying to estimate how many people were in the World Trade Center Complex on any given workday. It was an odd line of discussion, but I didn't give it much thought until I heard one of them interject without the slightest trace of whimsy '...and the Pentagon is still burning'. By that time, I figured I better turn on the TV and see what the hell was going on. No matter what channel I was watching, they were showing the skyline of lower Manhattan minus the WTC towers- just a giant incomprehensible sprawl of smoke, dust and rubble.


I was in a daze for awhile as I tried absorbing what had taken place while I was slumbering. Although I have relatives in Massachusetts and New York, I figured the odds of them being on one of the planes or in lower Manhattan were remote. Almost in a daze, I left for the grocery store and local pizza place, getting cans of soda and two extra large pizzas. From there, I went to the local chapter of the Red Cross, and sure enough, there was a line of people coiled around the block, volunteering to donate blood (this IS America, after all). Since I'm a total wuss who prefers to avoid needles, I simply started passing out slices of pizza and soda to the people waiting in line to give blood.
I wasn't sure what else I should do- although it would be reassuring to hear from some of my relatives (I have a few who are first responders in Upstate NY), I figured the courtesy call could wait, since they were reporting that almost 400 FDNY firefighters and NYPD officers were among those killed by the muslim terrorists that day. A death toll of hundreds- let alone thousands- was hard for me to comprehend (then again, so is rushing into a burning building of any size) and it looked as though some of my relatives would need to fill in for their besieged New York City counterparts. I was also getting word that there were people celebrating the attacks on the WTC towers and Pentagon. 'What kind of sick, vile, sociopathic fuckers would be celebrating this?' I asked myself.

I soon got my answer. Juxtapose the image of a man who decided he was BETTER OFF jumping to his death with the video from below that day.

The shock and sorrow was replaced by a smoldering anger that seemed to gradually intensify when CNN introduced these patronizing 'Islam is a Religion of Peace' puff pieces in the following days along with the occasional reminder that Timothy McVeigh (may he rot in hell) was a terrorist too. As important as it is that we never forget those who were murdered that day, it's just as important to keep in mind who was dancing on their graves.
It's also important to avoid sugar-coating the events of September 11, 2001, such as many in the entertainment industry referring to it in neutral terms like 'tragedy' or 'disaster'. No doubt the end result is tragic, but the Towers didn't collapse in a stiff breeze. The Pentagon didn't get that chunk torn out of due to a ruptured water main. Flight 93 didn't crash in a field in Western Pennsylvania because a bird got sucked into the engine. These were calculated, meticulously planned acts of mass murder by muslim extremists- to gloss over that or say otherwise is a piss-poor attempt at re-writing history.

This is what so many mean when they say 'NEVER FORGET'

Thomas E Franklin/Bergen County Record

I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my appreciation and gratitude for the first responders in police and fire departments nationwide. Although I have rambled on for quite a bit, I don't think there are adequate words to describe the professionalism and selflessness it takes to endanger your own life and rush into a burning building or lead people to safety as exemplified by those in the FDNY and NYPD that September day.

Today's Train of Thought: Planes Trains & Automobiles- No, REALLY! May 25th, 2010

Today's rather multi-modal train of thought comes to us from the land of Obama Lincoln and gives us a pretty good cross section of the American railroads that Canadian Pacific acquired to bolster its presence in the US Mid-West. [Despite the title and Chicagoland nature of this photo, John Candy and Steve Martin are nowhere to be seen- NANESB!]

Railpictures.net contributor Frank Stachowiak caught this meet between two Canadian Pacific trains at Bensenville, IL on May 16, 2010. The train on the right is a unit ethanol train that originated on CP's newest acquisition- Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern. While the bloom is off that particular rose, ethanol has been something of a blessing for the railroad industry since it's almost impossible to transport ethanol via pipeline. This necessitates lengthy trains of inbound grain and outbound finished product.

Don't let red and white SD40-2 #6089 fool you- that actually is (or was) one approximately two dozen SD40-2s the DM&E purchased secondhand from CP Rail. Yet, before it could even be repainted in Cedar America Holding's distincitve blue and yellow scheme (you can see a hint of it on the unit trailing the 6089 or here) Canadian Pacific acquired the DM&E and sister railroad Iowa, Chicago & Eastern, making repainting a pointless exercise.

While waiting to proceed through Bensenville, another freight train is given clearance to proceed past the 6089 and idling ethanol train. This one consist led by Soo Line SD60 #6024, still in it's 'vintage' white and red scheme (like what's seen here). Many of the former Soo Line SD60s had been put into storage or sold to reigonals like the Indiana Railraod, but with an expected increase in traffic CP has begun pulling units out of storage.

As one of the crewmen on the #6089 inspects the passing train, an American Airlines 737 flies overhead on it's approach to O'Hare airport. The passing traffic on the adjacent highway pays this scene little mind, as this is pretty common on the lines into and out of Chicago.

The Haiti Earthquake and Surprisingly Simple Things you Can Do To Help

I planned on putting in a plug for goodsearch in at some point, but the situation in Haiti has made it rather timely.

If you head on over to the Goodsearch homepage, you'll see a grey bar towards the bottom of the page marked 'Who do you goodsearch for?'. You can type in a phrase in the bottom search area and it will come up with a list of charities, shelters, museums, aid groups, schools and charities with that phrase that will show up in a drop bar.

For a timely example, if you type in the phrase 'Haiti' into the 'Who do you goodsearch for?' function, more than 50 organizations that were active in Haiti before the earthquake- including Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti- will show up on the drop bar. Simply select an organization- let's say Haiti Lumiere from the drop bar and begin searching via goodsearch. Goodsearch will then donate $.01 per search you use through them. Now, sometimes this blogger is intentionally vague in his search terms, which means that goodsearch will automatically suggest other, more specific phrases to search with.....which means you bump up the total raised while searching.

Also, people enrolled in American Airlines AAdvantage programs can earn bonus frequent-flyer miles when donating to the Red Cross' Haiti relief through a link on the airline's website.