You realize that many regular homes were completely wiped out by that tornado.
do you want to ban those as well?
What percentage of total Mobil Homes built have been destroyed by tornadoes?
The rooms I’m talking about have been engineered to withstand such forces; they’re either made of thick, rebar-reinforced concrete (both walls and ceiling) or 1/4" hardened steel which is bolted to the foundation. Nothing (not even an underground shelter) totally guarantees survival in an EF5 tornado, but these safe rooms (which meet FEMA standards and have been impact tested by Texas Tech) give the occupants a reasonably good chance.
I lived in Moore many yrs.
Two of my daughters live pretty much exactly 2 miles north of the school that was wiped out.
I know that area. I was there in April.
There aren’t/weren’t any mobile homes there.
The soil and weather conditions prohibit homes w/ basements.
And. That school was considered to be the safest building in the city. We can not build a building that God cannot un-build as he sees fit.
The 5-19 tornado leveled serveral trailer homes south of Moore. That’s such small potatoes after yesterday (5-20).
So I don’t know what you’re talking about.
So I can’t answer you.
Much of California already does this: there are laws mandating clear areas around houses. If you don’t mow the brush around your house, the County will do it for you – and bill you for it. Also, insurance companies will use a non-mown area as an excuse to drop coverage or deny benefits.
So no mobile homes east of the Rockies, except maybe West Virginia and New England?
I think existing trailers could be made safer with tie downs, solid knee walls. New ones could be required to be stronger. There’s no reason trailers can’t be made as sturdy as conventional housing.
That’s probably true. But even conventional housing’s no match for a violent tornado. So trailer parks will still need below-ground tornado shelters as well.
We could make some code improvements for framed housing as well: mandate hurricane clips on roofs, and a below-ground shelter or reinforced steel room bolted to the foundation. But whether we’re talking about mobile homes or stick-built ones, it’s easier to incorporate such changes to new units than to retrofit older ones, and that means a lot of housing stock will continue to remain vulnerable.
You know, I misread the title as mobile** phon**es.
Yes, let’s take away all the poor buggers ‘cell phones’, to stop them calling for help.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement there…
That map makes it look like the place you least want to be is somewhere just east of Jackson, MS. Is that really true? I thought Oklahoma, N. Texas, Kansas and Missouri were the main places routinely savaged by tornadoes, but the map doesn’t look like that’s the case.
Goodbye, that’s all she wrote.
I don’t think the government should have to mandate such things, but apparently they do. If I lived in tornado alley, I’d have a tornado shelter. If the Gales could afford it, then so could I.
Agreed. Mobile homes are vital affordable housing for lots of people. I have friends and relatives that live in them in tornado alley. They can be made safe.
Yes, in fact big box stores DO have storm shelters - at least in my area they do. The rest rooms double as storm shelters. Check 'em again next time you’re in one, all of them around here have signs stating the toilet areas are storm shelters and all of those areas are built like little bunkers for that reason.
As for the mobile home parks/trailers - I don’t think banning them is the solution, mostly because of the other problems doing so would spawn. Make storm shelters mandatory in mobile home parks, with such shelters (probably multiple ones for large parks) no further than X distance from any trailer.
Those shelters are $6-10k each. The people living in mobile homes for economic reasons are likely not able to afford that sum.
No, they’re not “expensive” in one sense, but they’re enough to be cost-prohibitive to many.
They can be made safer, but nothing is really safe in the sights of a storm like that.
Yes. Notice where I live?
What is different is not that the number of tornados has significantly increased, but the number of suburban homes has increased, consuming former farmland. Before, the tornado would land in some god forsaken field in Kansas, and find only sweep up a single girl and her little dog too. Today, it could hit that exact same spot, but now level an entire neighborhood.
So, it is not simply that trailer parks should be prohibited, but perhaps more farmland should be preserved too.
Oh for fuck’s sake. It’s the recognized department for tornado shelter research and development in the country, but posters here can’t get past “Texas”.
It’s called “Dixie Alley”, you can Google it while you search for the university that does storm shelter research.
I’ve seen the signs, but I’ve not seen evidence that those areas are actually reinforced to the level required for them to be true FEMA-compliant storm shelters. They lack a concrete or steel roof (as far as I can tell), the doors are flimsy, and they don’t appear to have concrete+rebar walls. They’re safer than the rest of the store, certainly, but a powerful tornado will still convert them to rubble.
That’s the best solution possible for mobile home parks, I think. Given the income level of the average mobile home dweller, individual shelters would probably be cost-prohibitive. But building multiple, strategically-placed units which families can share is much more affordable.
The other ting that’s different is that we now have high-quality Doppler radar coverage of the entire continental US, so we see and can count basically every tornado that forms now. In the past (before Doppler radar came into widespread use), even a strong tornado might not be identified if it developed out over some hayfield and didn’t hit anything of significance before it dissipated. Lots of itty-bitty tornadoes went completely unnoticed. That fact skews our statistics.
Nah, in my case it’s the “Tech” part. Maybe the tornado part has a good reputation, but the school as a whole is something like 5th fiddle as far as Texas’ public universities are concerned.