5 ms·
Please bear in mind that I don’t mean the following in a cynic way. Damage from storms is horrible, and I feel for the families losing their homes every year.
by manmal 5y ago
Please bear in mind that I don’t mean the following in a cynic way. Damage from storms is horrible, and I feel for the families losing their homes every year.
There was a tornado just a few days ago in the Czech Republic (not far from where I live), and as far as I can see, houses did lose their roofs, or the shingles at least, but the structures remained mostly intact. Many houses have basements in which people could hide in relative safety. Five people died unfortunately, not sure how many of those were in their homes at the time. But I think those rather sturdy houses made of bricks did infact save a lot of lives, and prevented many more from totally losing their home.
To me it feels deeply illogical to build a house basically made of light wood frames when I know a hurricane can blow it away while I‘m inside of it. I‘m not sure about earthquakes, we have them of course, but they are less severe than in other areas in the world.
- strstr 5y agoThe frequency and maximum strength of tornadoes are higher in the central US. Casual skim of the wikipedia page indicates about as many F4 tornadoes in Europe as F5 tornadoes in the US since 2000.
- octopoc 5y agoThere are many tornadoes where I live and most of the houses don’t have basements. Directly in the path of the tornado, houses built on a slab were completely gone, leaving only a clean slab. This happened to a few entire neighborhoods. But, tornadoes here follow similar paths over a fifty year period. When I bought my house I found a hole in the fifty year tornado map and I’ve never had one come near me. Every couple decades the patterns may shift to other patterns, but generally speaking both the new patterns and old patterns have all happened in the last fifty years.
- manmal 5y agoThat’s devastating. I wonder why houses in such areas are not required to provide underground shelter, or at least be built more solidly.
- ghaff 5y agoYou cannot reasonably build solidly enough to withstand a high-level tornado unless you're talking underground bunkers, which are not an acceptable answer.
- manmal 5y agoThat’s a bit defeatist, though? Efforts have been made, eg https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4102&context=all_theses https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... It seems a concrete dome would also work if digging a bunker is too expensive. Yes it’s not pretty, but not being afraid of dying during the next hurricane season must be worth something. A small dome can’t cost much.
- ghaff 5y agoSure. Building a reinforced shelter for tornadoes, nuclear attack, etc. may make sense. Historically, in the US Midwest that meant going into the basement. But you don't live there.
- bobthepanda 5y agoIs it not? For a few decades the Swiss required building concrete nuclear fallout bunkers for every resident. This was relaxed only recently, but presumably it was doable for five decades. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-bunker/swiss-relax-nuclear-shelter-construction-law-idUSTRE7B01RP20111201 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-bunker/swiss-relax-...
- ghaff 5y agoSo you can be in a bunker above ground. At that point you're quibbling.
- coryrc 5y agoIt's not a problem, people just don't want to pay for it. https://www.icfmag.com/2012/09/tornado-resistant-concrete-houses/ https://www.icfmag.com/2012/09/tornado-resistant-concrete-ho...
- ahnick 5y ago> I found a hole in the fifty year tornado map What was your source for this information?
- crooked-v 5y agoI just looked that up and that appears to have been an EF2 tornado. That intensity deals an order of magnitude less damage than the EF3, EF4, and EF5 tornadoes that regularly appear in the US, which can literally tear entire houses off their foundations. A brick building in those conditions would be reduced to individual bricks.
- manmal 5y agoI read it was estimated to be F4. Brick houses are definitely less likely to be destroyed than timber.
- syoc 5y agoTimber can be many things. I have a hard time seeing a log house being swept away by almost any force of wind.
- TylerE 5y agoThen you don't appreciate the forces at play. An EF4 will rip deep rooted trees right out of the ground.
- syoc 5y agoI can see that there are manufacturers selling log houses certified for cat-5 (245 mph) hurricanes. I do of course understand that any construction will be blown away at some point, I just cant picture it. The way the logs lock each other at the intersections and how the structure still is sound with no roof should help quite a bit.
- TylerE 5y agoThe big danger in a cat 5 is more the debris. There's a saying: It's not THAT the wind is blowing,it's WHAT the wind is blowing.
- mythrwy 5y ago
- coryrc 5y agoInsurance is federally subsidized/backstopped so people in hurricane or tornado zones don't have to pay for repairs directly, so it's cheaper to build a junk house than one which wouldn't take damage.
- jaclaz 5y agoWell, the three little pigs story must have been originated somehow from real life experience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Little_Pigs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Little_Pigs