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Dallas braces itself for a titanic tornado downtown: 'This is not a far-fetched scenario'

The tornado simulation was part of the largest severe weather exercise ever conducted in Dallas-Fort Worth, involving officials from local, state and federal agencies.

On a picture-perfect Thursday, Dallas officials contemplated a worst-case weather scenario: a monster tornado laying waste to downtown.

The EF-4 tornado simulation at the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management was the largest severe weather exercise ever conducted in North Texas, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail," Jenkins said, "and so we do these practices so that we're ready for the real thing."

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Dallas officials rehearsed the scenario with dozens of members from the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American Red Cross and other agencies.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins (standing) talks on a conference call in the policy room...
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins (standing) talks on a conference call in the policy room during a simulated EF-4 tornado strike at the Dallas County Emergency Operations Center in Dallas on Thursday, March 21, 2019. This was the largest severe weather exercise ever conducted in the D-FW area. (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)
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The exercise included an EF-4 storm — the second strongest on the Enhanced Fujita scale with winds between 166 and 200 mph — making a direct hit on downtown Dallas and other tornadoes touching down in Mesquite, Garland and Farmers Branch.

The estimated toll: at least 10 dead and hundreds injured.

"This is not a far-fetched scenario whatsoever," said Tom Bradshaw, a National Weather Service meteorologist, citing a tornado that hit downtown Fort Worth in March 2000 and an EF-4 that struck Rowlett, Garland and Sunnyvale a day after Christmas in 2015.

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A map of the simulated storm's path had it touching down southwest of downtown before moving northeast toward Dallas City Hall and several skyscrapers, then crossing over Woodall Rodgers Freeway and hitting Central Expressway.

"This is a beautiful sunny day outside. Outside this building, birds are singing, there's plenty of flowers, and the sun is shining," Bradshaw said. "It's gorgeous out, but these are the days we need to be exercising for those potentially worst-case scenarios."

Throughout the exercise, new scenarios were thrown into the mix for officials to address: thousands of students evacuating Mesquite High School, dispatching refrigerated trucks to transport the dead, rescuing dozens trapped in elevators in high-rise buildings, and looking for locations to treat injured people in the event that hospitals are damaged.

Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown said such exercises can help planners think "outside the box" and prepare in real-time for anything, including a catastrophe in a population center.

“We need to be practicing these types of activities," Brown said," because we are complacent [when] we're saying that they don't happen in a certain area."

A tornado crosses the Trinity River on the west side of Fort Worth and heads for downtown on...
A tornado crosses the Trinity River on the west side of Fort Worth and heads for downtown on March 28, 2000. The Mallick Tower is pictured just at the base of the tornado.(Carolyn Bauman/Star-Telegram / STAR-TELEGRAM)
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Growing cities in North Texas present new challenges that the weather service and other local and federal agencies need to prepare for, Bradshaw said.

“What we’re really facing here in North and Central Texas is that our footprint just keeps expanding year after year,” the meteorologist said. “There is a lot of real estate that weather can potentially impact.”

Tornado activity has been relatively quiet in Dallas County in recent years. Since 2016, Dallas County has seen three tornadoes, according to National Weather Service records, but Bradshaw said that could change at any time.

“It’s hard to know what kind of severe weather season we’re going to face from year to year, but every year brings unfortunately fresh opportunities to see this kind of adverse weather,” Bradshaw said.

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CORRECTION, 5 p.m., March 22: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that a tornado hit downtown Fort Worth in March 2002. The tornado was in 2000.