5 ms·
There 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 g
by octopoc 5y ago
There 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...
- hoseja 5y agoThere aren't many natural disasters a sufficient amount of reinforced concrete can't fend off.
- kayodelycaon 5y agoMany places the basement would be under the water table or have to be carved out.
- mcguire 5y agoAfter the 2011 tornadoes in the Southeast US, many communities built above-ground shelters (think "bunker"), with the downside being going any distance to a shelter is likely to be more dangerous than staying where you are. Also, many homeowners bought smaller above-ground shelters (think "steel pill-box").
- ahnick 5y ago> I found a hole in the fifty year tornado map What was your source for this information?