Emergency communication system
161 people were killed and at least 990 injured when an EF5 multiple-vortex tornado hit Joplin, Missouri. Because Joplin is located in a tornado-heavy area of the country, many people considered the tornado sirens routine and ignored them. Instead, many residents waited until they received confirmation from another, non-routine, source, such as seeing the tornado, a radio or TV report, or hearing a second siren. In the aftermath, an assessment team recommended that emergency warnings take risk perception into account to convey a sense of urgency. NOAA Officials are considering ways to change the warning system to distinguish smaller tornadoes from more deadly ones.
1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak
Another tornado formed near the St. Joseph County–Elkhart County border. It tracked east-northeasterly, striking Wakarusa, Indiana, where it killed a child. The tornado moved toward Dunlap, and the Midway trailer park. "Elkhart Truth" reporter Paul Huffman captured a series of photographs as the twin-funneled, F4 tornado obliterated the trailer park, just south of Dunlap. This initial tornado killed 14 people. One half-hour later, a second F4 tornado directly struck Dunlap to the north and devastated the Sunnyside Housing addition and the unoccupied Sunnyside Mennonite Church. The death toll from the Sunnyside Housing Addition was 28 people, with another six killed at a truck stop at the intersection of Highways 15 and 20. The Palm Sunday Tornado Memorial Park now exists near this location, at the corner of County Road 45 and Cole Street in Dunlap. Most of the 36 people killed in the tornado had no warning because the high winds from the first tornado had knocked out telephone and power grids. For the first time in the U.S. Weather Bureau's history, all nine counties in the northern Indiana office's jurisdiction were under a tornado warning. This is called a "blanket tornado warning." Both tornadoes were officially rated as F4 according to the National Weather Service records. However, both the Midway and Dunlap tornadoes were previously rated F5.