"Need to be built properly" seems to be description that is fit for most of the USA, it seems.
Germany has it's share of clay soil, too and it's no problem building houses with cellars there. They just cost about 10-20k more, according to a quick google search.
But in the US, it seems everybody wants everything for nothing.
Turn out that some things are indeed priceless, though.
I grew up in an area where there were often tornadoes. I remember many scary days and nights of hiding in the bathtub... not to mention having nightmares about them when I was little. I hope these people get all the assistance they need, though of course, nothing will replace all that was lost.
This is a bit off subject, but since we're talking about storms and building shelters, this is an excellent film, "Take Shelter." I saw it at the Zurich Film Festival a couple years ago, where it received a standing ovation:
Yeah, I just checked and sure enough... you're not from there. I think if you were, you'd have a different opinion. Despite the awful U.S. economy, there are plenty of hard workers in the U.S. This old notion of "the American dream" has been replaced with desire to simply be able to work to put food on the table for your family.
Yes, but 10-20k on a house price is a big step up in that part of the country, believe me. Some newer homes are for sale around $150,000 to $250,000 mark, but most older ones are go for between $50,000 and $80,000. Even at those sort of prices hardly anyone in my family could afford to buy one, they’re all out of work and unlikely to get a job soon.
I am glad you guys are not in charge of building a city. Soil has noting todo with building a basement ,but sewer system has . It would also be easy to build a ground floor above ground out of reinforced concret but proper gravel is almost not existent in the Missouri ,Mississipi basin [](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Mississippirivermapnew.jpg)
I remember watching a TV documentary about tornadoes where some experts said that it was a matter of time until a tornado would hit the city limits of Oklahoma City and that this scenario would be their worst nightmare.
This was about ten years ago. It seems that little has been done since then. Maybe it's just not possible to warn people earlier.
I guess it would have much damage too, if I remember correctely a documentary I watched a few years ago. They were saying that damage were not the fact of the wind, but from the difference of pressure inside the houses.
I grew up in the midwest and we has a storm cellar. As an adult, I lived in Kansas for quite a few years, and the last house we owned was one that was built to spec. It had a basement, but in the event of a tornado it would have basically just been a hole in the ground for debris to fill up.
In one corner of the basement, I had tornado shelter built with poured concrete walls and ceiling and a steel door. As I recall, the whole basement, unfinished with just stud walls, cost about $12,000 and the safe room was about another $3,000-4,000. I figured that it was money well spent.
If you've never seen the aftermath of a tornado, you can't imagine the devastation a tornado wind can cause. It's all well and good to blame American building techniques, but the reality is that a Swiss house wouldn't fair much better if you throw a bus through the wall at 300kph.
Yes, it does make sense. A house often explodes because the pressure inside is higher than the pressure outside. When I was a kid they used to advise opening the windows and doors to help equalise the pressure, not sure how much good it did though. But that only helps if you’re a fair distance from the tornado itself.
You’re quite right Desert Rat. Unless a property is built specifically to stand up to a tornado, nothing much is going to be undamaged by one, whether it be wood, stone, bricks or mortar, especially if it gets a direct hit.
I tolerated your first post that basically made the same incredibly uneducated point, but 2 posts are 2 too many. the climate differential in the US is much more significant than in central Europe (certainly 10 times what it is in Germany), and there is a swath more or less directly through the middle of the country that is horrifically prone to life-threatening thunderstorms and tornadoes. the people that live there build the homes that they can afford, it's as simple as that, and there really is no amount of building that can protect one from a once every several decades natural disaster, anyway. for these people, the option is to simply move elsewhere, and what kind of option is that, really?
Agree however I am not surprised as unfortunately this is the mentality that prevails on EF which thrives on making peoples misfortune into a you should have known better and anything that suggests someone should be congratulated is just not interesting on the EF
Weather prediction is just that. Some predictions come true, and some miss the mark. Tornados are random things. When they show up they can wipe out a home but leave the dog house in the back yard.
In 1999 I stood in my driveway in Wichita, storm sirens going off, and wondered what all the fuss was about. I could see a thunderstorm about 10 miles to the south and hear some lighting, but we didn't even any rain or wind gusts.
Those clouds contained a tornado that obliterated a swath of Haysville, 20 KM long and about 1 km wide.