Tornado Generates Wind, Phone Calls

When a tornado blew in to Murfreesboro (Tenn.) about noon on April 10th, it generated some of the heaviest telephone and radio traffic the dispatchers had ever experienced. Officials said the dispatchers fielded 487 telephone calls within 12 hours, ten times the number on a routine day. Dispatcher Betsy Lee’s husband and 11 year-old son were at a church camp, but she continued to focus on calls despite not knowing if they were safe. The off-going shift stayed to continue taking calls, helping until the calls slowed around midnight. Read more about the dispatchers great work here, then listen to logging tapes of the telephone calls and the radio traffic.