From what I understand, it has been common for quite some time for builders to build homes in places like Kansas without basements. I see photos of concrete slabs where homes used to be after a tornado passes through. Where did these people go? Where were they supposed to go when they heard an F5 was heading in their direction? Do basements really offer that good of shelter?
If you had a map of Kansas, and you drew a black mark on all the tornado touch down areas in the state over the last 100 years years, how black would the map be?
Could a person live their whole life in Kansas and not see a tornado touch down?
Bear in mind that some areas are not conducive to basement construction due to the type soils they have. Basements are also prohibited in mapped floodplains.
You could build a safe room into your house if you didn’t have a basement. This is a room which is strengthened to keep it from collapsing in the case of a tornado.
I agree you don’t need a whole basement. Remember the Wizard of Oz all of Dorothy’s family and the farm hands just went into a hole in the ground.
From the George Burns & Gracie Allen Show (radio - guest starring Ronald Reagan)
Gracie’s trying to find out some background information on Mr Reagan for a salute George is giving him at his club.
Reagan) I grew up in a very small quiet town in Illinois
Gracie) Oh I see not much excitment compared to California
Reagan) Oh we had excitment, for instance one summer we had three cyclones
Gracie) Really?
Reagan) Of course we had a real good cyclone cellar
Gracie) He must’ve been good if he sold you three of them
A basement isn’t a storm shelter. The question should be why are most without storm shelters. Storm shelters are not wide, so the rest of the house won’t fall down into them.
You can retrofit an existing room, or you can put one in during new construction.
It does mention that underground safe rooms perform the best. Water intrusion is a concern there, so they recommend a small room above grade for the safe room.
To answer this question, I’ve lived in Kansas and Nebraska for most of 4 decades and I’ve only even seen one tornado and that was because I went out and looked for it.
Not sure where you’re seeing these homes built in Kansas without basements. Most home in Kansas have basements, especially new construction. And WRT apartments, it’s just not feasible to build apartments underground, people want windows.
I’m in Southwest MO, 6 miles from KS and 10 miles from OK. We have already had 2 tornadoes this season within 40 miles of here and usually get at least a half-dozen tornado warnings in any given year.
Most homes here don’t have basements but storm shelters are starting to be pretty popular. The ground here is very rocky and digging a basement has just never been economically feasible.
I don’t live in Kansas, but I have lived in the midwest all my life. I’ve had a few tornadoes either pass over my home (twice in St. Louis in the 1960’s) or pass nearby (a couple years ago in my present area).
MOST tornadoes aren’t F5’s, even in tornado alley.
Most people in Tornado Alley never suffer a direct hit.
Most places I’ve lived have had basements. In apartment buildings tenants usually have access to the basement, and if things are dire you can go down there and huddle in a corner.
Where I am presently basements are not feasible - the damn things would just flood as the water table is so high. So if things get really freaky we go into the boiler room, which is a solid brick structure all around, with no outside walls, on the first floor, and hide there.
Safe rooms are becoming more and more common. They are often used as walk-in closets when tornadoes are not about, or some sort of storage. They can be really small, as you will only need them for a short time in the event of a bad storm.
May campgrounds have storm shelters - actually, they’re usually latrines with cinderblock walls. Ditto for highway rest stops, where the bathrooms double as storm shelters. Big box stores like Meijer’s and Wal-Mart also have public rest rooms that double as shelters.
It’s becoming more and more common for mobile home parks to have storm shelters as well - usually as substantial brick/cinderblock building where folks cram into the place during severe storms.
You don’t have to have a basement - what you do need is a small, sturdy, enclosed space to shelter in.
That’s the thing that gets me about people making fun of tornando alley. Tornandos effect a very narrow area and are usually on the ground briefly. So why do they allow trailer houses in hurricane areas where the area affected is very large and the storms can linger?
I am a native of South Dakota and have lived in Kansas 20 years. The closest I’ve come is as a kid when what they claim were straight line winds tore the garage CLEANLY off the house and its foundation without harming the house.:eek:
A point to understand is at that map scale, the thinnest line they can draw on the map is 10 miles wide, and actual tornado is a couple hundred feet to maybe a couple thousand feet wide at most. They also can’t draw a damage track length much less than 10 miles long, when most actual damage tracks are a mile or so total.
So those maps exaggerate the reality of tornado coverage by 2,000 to 10,000 times.
And these maps cover 60 years of data. So you can either look at that accurately showing about a lifetime’s tornado risk, or as exaggerating the one-year risk by a factor of 60.
There is more data there for the picking. I don’t have time to hunt down the details.
I have seen online maps of the last 30-ish years worth of tornadoes for Missouri. With the damage tracks drawn at an accurate width & length scale to the map, it’s a small ccollection of tiny short scratches on the surface of the state.
Katrina covered 50%+ of LA & MS with hurricane-force winds & rain. And the other 50% with tropical storm intensity winds and rain.
Yes, a basement isn’t necessarily helpful; you really want a proper storm shelter if ground conditions permit.
Several years ago in Illinois, several people took shelter in the basement of a tavern when the tornado warning went out. Part of the building collapsed into the basement and killed 8 of the people down there. At the time, some were saying that it was the strongest building in the area, being made out of stone and brick, but it looks like age and the force of the tornado didn’t help.
I live in central Illinois, and have neither a basement nor a storm shelter. In fact, I live in a trailer. :eek:
When the tornado sirens go off, Mrs. Homie implement a 3-part plan:
[ul]
[li]Stuff the cats into cat carriers, at risk of great personal harm.[/li][li]Haul ass about 1.7 miles to Lowe’s and bunker down in the employee break room.[/li][li]Hope we get there before the tornado blows us off the road.[/li][/ul]
I take comfort in knowing that there have been exactly zero tornado-related fatalities in Springfield city limits in my lifetime.
with commercial buildings like taverns or stores there may not be the space to have a nonbasement storm shelter and if so it would be a large area and subject to collapse. best that might be had is a reinforced basement ceiling in a smaller walled shelter area that could accommodate a large number of people.
on 7/13/04 there was a F4 tornado, near Roanoke IL. a huge manufacturing plant did have three above ground storm shelters in the plant. people in the office had weather radios that would trigger when alerts were issued, when a warning was issued they posted trained people looking outside as spotters. when the spotters thought sheltering was needed the plant would be evacuated into the shelters. after the tornado the whole plant was debris except for the storm shelters, all 150 persons were uninjured.
I’ve lived in tornado-prone Midwestern states my whole life and never actually needed to take shelter. My current house has a basement, but whenever the tornado sirens have gone off, we’ve just listened for how close they are (never all that close) and checked the weather reports. If we did have to take shelter, we’d skip the basement and huddle in the storm cellar-style outer entry to our basement, made of concrete and probably the most secure spot as it doesn’t have the house built directly on top of it.
