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Fatal Crashes Involving Storm Chasers 'Only a Matter of Time'

With chasers routinely trying to monitor the latest radar, post to social media, talk on the cellphone and keep an eye on strong thunderstorms, safe driving often plummets to the bottom of the priority list.

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(TNS) — Jason Persoff had a stern warning for his fellow storm chasers earlier this year at ChaserCon, the national storm chasers convention in Denver.

With chasers routinely trying to monitor the latest radar, post to social media, talk on the cellphone and keep an eye on strong thunderstorms, safe driving often plummets to the bottom of the priority list.

It’s only a matter of time, Persoff said then, before storm chasers not paying attention cause a deadly collision.

“I’m telling you now, it’s going to happen,” Persoff said in his presentation at the February convention. “We are a distracted lot, my friends.”

Persoff’s words proved prophetic less than two months later, when three people — all of them storm chasers — were killed in a two-vehicle collision in west Texas.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said an SUV driven by Kelley Williamson of Cassville, Mo., ran a stop sign on March 28 and collided with a Jeep driven by Lee Jaeger of Peoria, Ariz.

Williamson, 57, and his childhood friend and chase partner Randy Yarnall, 55, were under contract with The Weather Channel, while Jaeger, 25, was chasing strong storms in the area on his own. All three died.

‘No one had to die’

In the days after the fatal collision, several chasers on Facebook vowed to follow the speed limit, halt at stop signs and pay more attention to the road.

“Stop pledging to start following the law,” storm chaser Paige Burress of Norman, Okla., posted in response. “You should have been doing that already.

“We all make mistakes and we all slip up, but if you feel the need to dramatically change how you chase in the wake of this incident, you are part of the problem.”

Persoff revisited the dangers of reckless driving while storm chasing in a Facebook post after the fatal collision in Texas.
 
“No one had to die yesterday,” Persoff said in his online post. “They didn’t die doing what they loved, they died because of carelessness and ego. That’s a horrible way to die folks.

“So stop using that to ease your pain. Instead, reflect on the behavior that caused their deaths and change your behavior so this isn’t repeated.”

‘Extraordinarily poor’ decisions

Storm chasing has exploded over the past 20 years, and Persoff said it’s every chaser’s dream to earn a living by selling tornado and severe-weather photos and videos.

But few are actually able to achieve that dream, he said. Most are doing well simply to pay their expenses for what in reality is an expensive hobby.

“There is incredible pressure on people who are trying to make a living storm chasing to get sellable footage,” Persoff said.

To get the most powerful video, Persoff said, chasers have to get close to the storm, which means being in the right place at the right time.

“You really have to be in the thick of it,” Persoff said.

He fears for the safety of local residents who could be injured or killed by chasers who treat stop signs or speed limits as little more than hints.

“I do believe that for those chasers who make this into their financial income, the possibility of missing an important photograph or important video makes them make decisions that are extraordinarily poor,” Persoff said.

Veteran storm chaser Michael Phelps said he has been in storms where dozens of chasers have been racing bumper-to-bumper to catch up to storms, blowing through numerous stop signs along the way. It’s a common practice when chasers are in “storm mode,” he said in an electronic response to questions.

‘They were just everywhere’

When a large tornado demolished a house and just missed the small town of Rozel in western Kansas in May 2013, so many storm chasers had converged on the area that “it was a tight squeeze” for emergency vehicles to get by them on K-156 en route to the house to check for victims, Pawnee County Sheriff Scott King said.

“They were just everywhere,” King said. “The highway was clogged.”

For a few years now, the Wichita branch of the National Weather Service has monitored the live streams of storm chasers to verify what radar is showing them. More branches and other agencies are following suit.

Video shot by chasers has also proven to be valuable for weather researchers studying the evolution of tornado-producing storms.

King said he understands that chasers can provide important information with their videos and photographs. Still, he’s concerned about the potential consequences of reckless driving.

“They don’t get it – if they crash, then we have to stop and render aid” rather than check on the welfare of anyone in the path of a tornado, King said.

While that is less of an issue in urban areas with larger departments, he said, it’s significant in rural areas with few deputies on staff.

In urban areas

Chasers have not caused problems in and around Wichita with their driving, local law enforcement officials said.

“In my entire career, I have not seen storm chasers doing anything crazy and I have been around a lot of storms,” Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter said in an e-mail response to questions.

Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet concurred.

“I haven’t seen a problem with it,” he said. “It’s not been an issue.”

Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Chad Crittenden said he has heard of few cases of chasers driving dangerously in urban areas. But they’re more common in less-populated parts of the state.

“I know last year we had some issues in some of our western counties,” Crittenden said.

The most common were speeding and passing in no-passing zones, he said.

“There’s a high likelihood they’re going to be distracted talking on phones, recording video, staring out the windshield” at the sky instead of the road, Crittenden said. “Unfortunately, it’s a very difficult thing to multitask in an automobile. Obviously, horrible consequences can happen.”

Persoff and other chasers said the best practice to avoid the dangers of distracted driving is to never chase alone – and have the driver focus solely on the road. But it’s one thing to promise that on a quiet day and another to stick to it in the heat of the moment.

“The true miracle is this doesn’t happen all the time,” Persoff said of the fatal collision. “The fact that this is the first major one in a number of years is remarkable.

“The reality is this should actually happen more often.”

If it does, Persoff said during his presentation at ChaserCon, chasers face the increasing likelihood that states may pass legislation restricting what they can do.

“When that fatal accident happens that takes innocent lives … and it’s going to happen … it’s going to affect us dramatically,” he said.
 

Stan Finger: 316-268-6437, @StanFinger

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