Now I am only asking, but couldn't underground shelters be built at regular intervals for people to escape to in high risk areas?
Words fail me - it is so awful, poor people.
Yes and they use to
The biggest problem is the short time of warnings ,some times just minutes
[QUOTE]Words fail me - it is so awful, poor people.
Now I am only asking, but couldn't underground shelters be built at regular intervals for people to escape to in high risk areas?[/ QUOTE]
From Mexico well up into Canada
I wouldn’t want to be in one of those for too long, they look a bit cramped. An hour or two in those and I think everyone would be very relieved to get out again.
Our neighbour’s one was more a proper cellar type, quite a big room with seating and shelves - great place to keep all the preserves and canned goods they made each year.
But those tornadoes don't last very long - so surely it would be worth it.
Unfortunately, so many communities in the U.S. are hurting financially right now, I doubt they'd be able to easily fund the construction of huge, community shelters... especially since there is a chance they'd never be used. And most people probably don't have the money or means to build one on their own properties.
Well, this one was 40 minutes, but sometimes you can be down a shelter for a couple of hours. It just depends on how extensive the storm system is. I certainly think more people/builders in the area should consider getting them installed.
What they need is State government pushing to get a system for shelters in place and a long term plan for installing them. It may take years, but that sort of planning has never stopped the Swiss from getting things done. And the repair/rebuilding costs certainly aren’t going to go down either. It’s a bit like insurance, you hope you never need it, but are thankful you have it when you do.
I'm currently in the states and the news media coverage is extensive and it's been the most filmed tornado on record. The residents, all hardworking blue collar, have been through this before - including one 94-year young woman, named Nancy, who's home was also destroyed in the 1999 EF-5 tornado with winds between 302 - 318 mph!! Can you imagine those odds? The devastation is vast and help is needed. While FEMA may be slow to get going, the "faith-based" FEMA is already there, distributing food and water to the displaced.
The schools that were obliterated?? One was a mod concept with open areas in the middle which provided an exit for all those trapped. No deaths there. Plaza Towers elementary was older with conventional roof enveloping the entire structure. When it collapsed, it imploded - trapping adults and children.
No funds were in the school's budget to allow for underground shelters. Hopefully this will change.
Interesting to note - Oklahoma reps and senators voted against contributing to Super Storm Sandy victims.....
Here’s a Beeb article explaining some of the reasons why:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22619929
Frankly, if you’ve been through that devastation once I can’t think why you wouldn’t build one. Seeing your life being literally torn to pieces like that, how can you believe it would never happen again in an area that known as “Tornado Alley”? Maybe in New York, but smack dab in the target zone - you’re being a fool not to build one.
There is a ton of ignorance in this thread, at least this article decently explains some things.
I spent a fair part of my young life in eastern NM, right on the edge of Tornado Alley. In my town, there were a few tornados that came around, but only one actually hit the town. It was a weak F1 that hit a friend of mine's house (mobile home) and tipped it over, but no injuries or fatalities. In the past 20 years in my town, there have been two fatalities due to tornados.
Schools had designated "safe areas" where we would evacuate to in case of a tornado. If there was a tornado in the area, people were notified via sirens. As I grew up, I saw the technology for detecting a tornado become very advanced, but still, they form so quickly that you often just have minutes to seek shelter.
My father is from DFW, where he remembers sitting on a roof, watching a tornado a couple of miles away ripping up a neighborhood. I used to watch the clouds swirling in the distance, seeing funnel clouds dropping out of the sky like evil fingers. Pretty frightening for a 12 year old kid.
You simply cannot build a house to withstand an F4-F5 tornado. All you can do is plan ahead for surviving one, which involves building a shelter. But as others have said, it's an economic question - the earth is too difficult to dig into so building a shelter is extremely expensive. The chances of an F3-F5 tornado hitting your house are pretty small. It's just a question of risk management, and you are usually pretty safe if you seek shelter in the center of your house, away from windows, and under a mattress. Everyone from this part of the country should know to take shelter in a bathroom in the middle of the house, in the bathtub, under a mattress.
If a tornado is coming, there is often just not enough time to gather everyone up and go to a community shelter. This is probably why they do not exist. The fella who builds concrete shelters, however, is probably on to something.
There are some measures that you can take to make your house more able to withstand a smaller (F1-F2) tornado, such as better anchoring the roof to the other structural members, and this should be something homeowners should do, but often don't.
I will say, however, that in places such as schools, there needs to be some sort of shelter. For a tornado to hit an elementary school, killing a bunch of kids, is a huge tragedy that a little foresight could have possibly helped prevent (I say possibly, because these tornados just hit so quickly).
Tornado Alley has widen over the last few decades just as earthquakes, while still predominately felt on the west coast, have been occurring more and more along the eastern seaboard.
The reason the death toll wasn't as high as it might have been were due to lessons learned in 1999. More and more home have built small underground bunkers.
Motorschweitz is correct that technology has improved and that's what 5-10% of storm chasers are concerned with - finding those weather markers that will not only enable earlier warnings but more importantly, accurate warnings. Their goal is to eliminate the 'cry wolf' attitude that often accompanies the siren warnings.
Tornado survivor makes surprise discovery during TV interview
Saw this on the news last night. I think the presenter had a tear in her eye!
It does seem strange that shelters shouldn't be standard in a tornado zone (even if it's possible to just walk out of the rubble!), and that people should think that there would be less chance of an area experiencing another tornado if a tornado had already hit. Surely the opposite would be true, just as in an earthquake zone.
From CNN:
"The mayor of tornado-ravaged Moore, Oklahoma, will push for a law requiring storm shelters or safe rooms in new homes, he told CNN Wednesday.
“We’ll try to get it passed as soon as I can,” Glenn Lewis said.
The ordinance would apply to single-family and multifamily homes."
Interestingly enough, there is some precedent for that type of thing. In Scottsdale, there are no tornados, but fires are a constant concern due to the dry conditions.
When we bought out house, I was surprised to note that in addition to smoke alarms, it had commercial grade fire sprinklers in the ceiling of every room. Upon asking, I was told that every new construction home built or remodeled since 1985 had to have them by code.
I can't imaging how much it costs to install sprinklers in a house, but it's got to be more expensive than putting a storm bunker in the back yard.
There seems to be an appetite to force the issue which seems so typical of the USA wait for the problem to the legislate a solution. While it may cost more the law is a damn good idea and to those that complain on the cost what price do you put on life ?
When will it end .last Friday ,31.may I flew right over it.was bumpy
It is awful. Having lived in OK for awhile and having my dad's family from there, I can tell you that in many places in OK the population cannot afford the tax infrastructure to build such shelters, and further, warning times can be so small that there just wouldn't be time to evacuate to one if they (the shelters) were there. Many homes, however, do come built with storm cellars, and (sometimes) storm rooms in the house itself; the problem with this is that this is more common among newer homes, and is too costly for most to renovate and add this to an existing home. With time, things will continue to improve, and I don't know of a practical solution to speed this up.
Too true Jobsrobertsharpii. That’s why a shelter under the house or in the backyard is often the best way to go. With only minutes sometimes to react, getting to any big shelters in time is problematic.
The whole midwest is having a rough storm season.
My wife was on a flight from Chicago to St. Louis last Friday night (about an hour long flight). En route they were put into a hold for about 20 minutes before finally having to turn back to Chicago because storms were so bad in STL that they evacuated the control tower and closed the airport.