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Tornado alley bedroom community building codes

CHUM said:
you do realize that the path of destruction a tornado leaves is only a small fraction of what an earthquake hits right?

draw a line in the sand with your finger - that line is the tornadoes damage...everything outside that line is 'untouched'

hop on a steamroller and drive over the same section of sand - wherever the sand is compacted is where the earthquake hit.

the chance of getting nailed by a tornado, in tornado alley, is really freaking small...

Odds of dying in a tornado are 1 in 2 million
Odds of being killed by falling out of bed are 1 in 2 million.
the pics are pretty unsettling. A swath of complete destruction and then a bunch of homes largely untouched.

so...ya wanna put guardrails up on your bed just in case you fall out one night? :laughing
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The pics are unsettling. A swath of destruction and then a handful of homes largely untouched.
djtA8.St.81.jpeg
 
I dunno about untouched. I think a lot of those homes that haven't been flattened, but are near by the flattened ones, are going to have to be razed and rebuilt anyways. Watching the news last night, even buildings that were still standing have been very badly damaged.
 
good point. at least for the homes that look intact, taking cover in the bathroom probably worked. In the homes where there's nothing, not so much :(.
 
Marlowe said:
You would lose badly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#10_deadliest_tornadoes

Vs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#55_Deadliest_earthquakes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll#10_deadliest_tsunamis

Shoot, heat kills more old people each summer than we typically lose to tornadic storms.

I did a lot of growing up in the midwest, and have been through several of those storms, and you know, we all survived.
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While each earthquake kills more, which kills more people in the US per year? Loma Prieta killed 63, Northridge 57. Have we had a double digit death earthquake in the US since then?
 
Marlowe said:
Sort of.

I was waiting for this one, so here we go...

:laughing

You realize 95% of the retrofits done in the Bay Area were done for life safety reasons alone, right?

Not...to ensure that the structure would still be usable afterwards. I've seen very few refits like that...the last one I saw done cost around $20 million.

You might live, but don't assume your home wouldn't be just as much of a tear down as theirs afterwards.
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My parents place is half a mile from the Hayward fault. They replaced the foundation, at significant cost, because my father wanted to avoid having the house red tagged in a maximum credible. Yellow tagged? Ok... but he wants to be able to at least get stuff out before demo.
 
aminalmutha said:
I dunno about untouched. I think a lot of those homes that haven't been flattened, but are near by the flattened ones, are going to have to be razed and rebuilt anyways. Watching the news last night, even buildings that were still standing have been very badly damaged.
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I had neighbors whose roof was ripped off by a tornado. No other damage anywhere.

they replaced it only to have it ripped off again 3 weeks later - complete and total freak thing...and no other damage. (of course this was a MUCH smaller tornado)

tornadoes are weird....and actually scary to see one bouncing around....

EDIT: barn roof...not the house roof.
 
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The real question is what or how much duty do YOU think the government has to protect your safety? Build a building to shield people from a once in two hundred year event at huge cost? One in one hundred? One in fifty?
 
Junkie said:
My parents place is half a mile from the Hayward fault. They replaced the foundation, at significant cost, because my father wanted to avoid having the house red tagged in a maximum credible. Yellow tagged? Ok... but he wants to be able to at least get stuff out before demo.
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Right.

I don't think people realize that they are not likely to be able to reuse the residence afterwards... which isn't really any different.
 
I was in Oklahoma for the last F5 that went through in 1999. I had no basement to go to and it was the first tornado I had ever experienced. Fuck earthquakes, tornadoes are some frightening shit. The sound alone is just down right evil. I was in the epicenter of the Northridge quake and even that shaking was nothing compared to the raw destructive power I experienced in Oklahoma. Honestly, I don't know why people choose to live there, but they do. And the reality is, you can't stop mother nature from doing her thing. The only thing you can do is mitigate it as best as possible.

I had the news on which informed people that didn't have cellars to go to to just go into a bathroom or closet in the middle of the structure you were in and stay there until the tornado passes. I did so and shook with fear the entire time.

Really though, bitching about building codes not being good enough to prevent people from dying when a random killer tornado (most aren't nearly powerful enough to cause the destruction seen recently) comes through seems the same as bitching about gun control laws not being strong enough to stop human nature from running its course. Shit is going to happen that's outside of human control. You can make the buildings stronger but honestly, how strong can you really make them? Is that really going to stop this shit from happening? And furthermore, who's going to pay for all the forced upgrades? The average homeowner can't afford that...nor the average 7-11 owner.
 
Why do people live in Oklahoma? Well, not all that long ago, they were, for all intents and purposes, giving away land. Those people's children's children etc. live there. They have roots there. Many of them are probably not able to move somewhere else for economic reason, plus the fact that they likely have family there.

Besides, no place is entirely safe from natural disaster.
 
We should eliminate the catalyst for tornados. Chemtrails.
 
afm199 said:
How many people in the Bay Area even KNOW the state of their home's earthquake preparedness? Damn few I'd wager. "I'm sure the landlord follows the rules" is probably the status quo, or " I can't afford to but I'm not worried."
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I do, but I paid a Civil Engineer to take a look at my house when I bought it and the sale was in contract.

That is where I learned about things like cripple walls (which my house does not have :teeth)
 
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