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by Whitney Bryen

The City of Noble has been preparing for storm season by asking all residents with storm shelters to fill out a form disclosing the shelters’ GPS locations.  

“After the May 3rd tornado in 1999 several shelters were difficult to find since there are no land marks in many of those locations,” Noble Fire Chief Gary Bonner said. “This means it could take too much time to find the shelters since we don’t know how many there are or where they are located.” 

The new system requires shelter owners to provide general information about the location of their shelter and GPS coordinates. The forms can be picked up and returned at Noble City Hall. If you need help finding the GPS coordinates ask for contact information when picking up your form and the city will provide the coordinates. 

The city is confident that this simple procedure will help protect its residents from being trapped in an undisclosed location, Bonner said. If the location is documented the rescue efforts are improved. 

The city also suggests having a 72-hour survival kit to prepare for unexpected Oklahoma storms. The kit should include items such as: water, food, toiletries, a first aid kit, a flashlight, batteries and a radio.

Generators have become a more recent concern for rescue crews after an Oklahoma women died from carbon monoxide poisoning after leaving her generator too close to her home.

“They can be a great convenience,” Bonner said, “but carbon monoxide poisoning is a growing concern.”

For those who do not have a storm shelter hope is not lost. According to a foxcarolina.com article on weather safety, staying away from windows is the key to thunderstorm and tornado safety if you cannot be in a shelter. Do not get underneath a highway overpass during a tornado and severe wind; the wind increases in this confined space.

More storm safety literature is available at Noble City Hall.

By Cap Kaylor

“WILL NO ONE STOP THAT MAN?”

April 26th.  For some reason the date seemed to stir up a strange sense of ill-ease, haunting me throughout the morning like some partially materialized ghost from a Dickens’ story.     But April is a long way from  December , and wasn’t the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, or Future that troubled me  Then I remembered why  the date seemed so familiar.  On April 26th , one hundred and forty-three years ago the last act of a national tragedy was played out when John Wilkes Booth was tracked down to the Garrett farm in Virginia and killed while being taken prisoner.

 I knew the date was familiar because I had just recently finished  Manhunt  by James Swanson chronicling the hunt for Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.  If you like history you’ll find it a good read.  If, like me, you believe in Georges Santayana’s prophesy that “those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”, you will  know that history is always and everywhere relevant. 

 The awful truth that emerges from the story of Lincoln’s assassination is that there is always a terrible, terrible price to be paid for the inability to “think outside the box”.  The simple things that could have been done to save Lincoln and weren’t is stupefying.  During a time of war and rebellion the 16th president of the United States had virtually no security at all.  And neither did the chief officers of the government.  The conspirators came very close to successfully decapitating the Federal government.  Lincoln’s sole bodyguard at Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14th left his post and went across the street to have a drink.  Secretary of State Seward was nearly killed when his would-be assassin was allowed to walk, virtually unopposed , right into his home and up to his bedroom.  And all it would have taken for Vice-President Johnson’s assassin to succeed was for him to walk up the stairs and knock on the door of the hotel room where Johnson was staying.

 With the exception of Maj. Henry Rathbone , (a guest with his fiancee` of the Lincoln’s that night), no one in the audience of a thousand people made any move to stop the president’s assassin.   After shooting Lincoln, and slashing Rathbone to bone with a bowie knife, Booth, leaped from the presidential box to the stage shouting, “the South is avenged” .  Even then, the audience continued to sit there in stunned confusion and silence.   Booth glared into the darkness beyond the footlights and walked, not ran, into the wings.   All the while a wounded Maj. Rathbone pathetically begging the audience to , “Stop that man!  Stop that man!  Will NO ONE stop that man?”

 He was never stopped.  Not once during his wild ride through the streets of Washington.  Not even by the Union sentry who (against standing orders) permitted him to cross the Navy Yard Bridge making good his escape into the safety of Maryland.

More often than not people seem stunned and paralyzed by the unexpected.  To a larger degree than most of us would like to admit we move through our days anesthetized by our routines and habits.  Familiarity can lull us into a kind of dream state in which we sleepwalk through our lives.  There is a sort of social script that we all follow in our interactions with each other that doesn’t  allow the possibility that we might be witness to or victims of sudden unexpected acts of violence.  And because we haven’t rehearsed the possibility in our minds we panic when  it happens.   But if there is anything we should  know in our post 9/11 world it is that none of us are insulated from the threat of harm.  Not on the street, not at work, not in a restaurant, not at home.  Prudent caution is the order of the day without allowing fear to define our lives. The right response to a violent world is not paranoia but preparation!  Do we have an emergency plan should unexpected danger suddenly find us?  The thug in the parking lot?  The loved one who suddenly collapses?  The killer storm that arrives without warning?  Will we be among those able to take action, or will we stand by passive and paralyzed …the anguished echoes of  Maj. Rathbone  ringing  in our ears, “Stop that man, stop that man!  Will NO ONE stop that man?”