Moore Tornadoes

[heironymouspasparagus]

Not politics, but we don't really have another 'state' topic area...

If anyone is so inclined, here is a kind of central location information source for Moore.  As always, Salvation Army always works to funnel aid where needed....

guido, there is a law firm in OKC that is making a challenge -  matching donations from any lawyer in the state up to $10,000!!


http://kfor.com/2013/05/21/tornado-relief-drop-off-locations-around-metro-okc/

[sauerkraut]

In California & Japan they have Earth-Quake requirements and standards for buildings. In FL they have hurricane building standards. In the heart of the heart of "tornado alley" there are no standards for buildings when it comes to wind speed or tornados. Instead of building schools with all those fancy frills and cosmetic designs why not invest that money to make a school stronger and more storm resistant, one way would be to use steel frames instead of blocks and metal trusses, and use domes, studies show that a dome can resist more wind speed than a non-dome. Homes can have steel mountings on the foundation slab where the 2X4's are bolted on to - sure a severe storm can snap off the 2X4's from the steel beam, but it has to remembered that  less than one percent of all twisters are F-4 & F-5. Stronger buildings won't hurt. Better Construction is a good place to start.

[Red Arrow]

In the heart of the heart of "tornado alley" there are no standards for buildings when it comes to wind speed or tornados.

Actually, there are wind standards but they are not EF-5 tornado proof.

[Gaspar]

Actually, there are wind standards but they are not EF-5 tornado proof.

Nothing is, except perhaps a cement bunker.  The nader pulled grass out of the ground.

[Hoss]

Nothing is, except perhaps a cement bunker.  The nader pulled grass out of the ground.

You'd be a hell of a lot more safe however, even in a saferoom above ground, then in ANY room in your house during a tornado the size of the one last week in Moore.

Mother's condition makes it a bit difficult for me to consider an 'in ground' solution, so we will likely go with an above ground in the backyard somewhere.

[Gaspar]

You'd be a hell of a lot more safe however, even in a saferoom above ground, then in ANY room in your house during a tornado the size of the one last week in Moore.

Mother's condition makes it a bit difficult for me to consider an 'in ground' solution, so we will likely go with an above ground in the backyard somewhere.

I would be very interested to see if anyone in the area had one of the steel safe-rooms so popular with the builders now.  I would assume after 99' that at least a few people in that area had such, yet I haven't heard any reports.

Anyone heard about a safe-room living up to "the test?"

[Conan71]

I would be very interested to see if anyone in the area had one of the steel safe-rooms so popular with the builders now.  I would assume after 99' that at least a few people in that area had such, yet I haven't heard any reports.

Anyone heard about a safe-room living up to "the test?"

According to the emergency management director of Moore, since the 1999 tornado, about 10% of the homes in Moore had storm shelters or safe rooms.  I had found this article last week, it's from late April 2013.  Also goes into detail the role of FEMA in recovery efforts.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/cnhi_special_projects/x2002132914/Disaster-Dollars-Money-spent-beforehand-blunts-the-impact-of-disasters

I suspect many in Moore thought the 1999 tornado was a once in a lifetime event so they figured "what's the point in putting in a safe room or shelter?"  Turns out it was not and I suspect as a result there will be brisk demand for safe rooms and storm shelters.  I also suspect due to the deaths in the schools safe rooms or shelters will become design standards from now on out.  I have also seen a number of RFQ's over the years for safe rooms in rural school systems.  Seems like there was a spate of them after the porkulus bill of '09 was trotted out.

My personal preference would be in-ground with a sliding lid like people have installed flush with their garage floor.  I'm claustrophobic so the idea of something landing in front of a swing out door and not being able to get out until help arrives really wigs me out.  A guy I went to Jenks with lost his home in the Piedmont tornado and with it, his above-ground safe room.  Yet his neighbor's safe room was still secured to the slab.  No idea if it was inferior lagging used on Kelly's installation or quite simply the randomness of destruction we see with tornados you simply cannot engineer around.

And from this report investigating damage to engineered structures in the '99 Moore/OKC tornado it seems there's still quite a bit we do not know about engineering around these disasters:

Unfortunately, much is unknown about the nature of large tornadoes and the loads that they generate on structures. A better understanding of the tornadoes, the wind speeds, and the wind loads they generate is necessary for engineers to be able to design safer and more risk-consistent structures. It will also help to speed the acceptance of better building codes, and will allow better estimation of the true risk of losses due to large tornadoes.

Achieving this understanding will require considerably more data, as well as better methods of classifying tornadoes.

Interesting read:

http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build02/PDF/b02166.pdf

[rebound]

My personal preference would be in-ground with a sliding lid like people have installed flush with their garage floor.  I'm claustrophobic so the idea of something landing in front of a swing out door and not being able to get out until help arrives really wigs me out.

I have an above-ground safe room in my garage.  I agree that below ground is better, and I grew up with a cellar in SW OK and rode out more than a few tornado warnings in the 70's inside it, but I sit on solid limestone up here in Owasso and the cost to dig out an in-ground room was ridiculous.  One point on the comment above,  the above ground models (at least all that I looked at a few years back when we moved back up here) have doors that open in, not out.  So that if debris lodges against the outside you can still open the door and get out.

[Conan71]

I have an above-ground safe room in my garage.  I agree that below ground is better, and I grew up with a cellar in SW OK and rode out more than a few tornado warnings in the 70's inside it, but I sit on solid limestone up here in Owasso and the cost to dig out an in-ground room was ridiculous.  One point on the comment above,  the above ground models (at least all that I looked at a few years back when we moved back up here) have doors that open in, not out.  So that if debris lodges against the outside you can still open the door and get out.

That is good to know, maybe I can breathe now when I think of an above-ground safe room!  History tends to be on our side up in this area as far as the Tulsa area never having a recorded EF-5 event, and even an EF-4 is quite rare with only two events in the Tulsa area. That's not to say our luck holds out forever, but suggests an above ground shelter should be sufficient.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=tornadodata-county-ok-tulsa

[patric]

In-ground pools are common here, and a lot tougher to dig than a septic-tank-sized shelter.

Ive read the difference between being in a car and an above-ground shelter is that you have a chance of escaping in a car.
Joplin rescuers pulled bodies out of above-ground shelters that tore from their bolts, but by the same token, a man in a basement was killed when an airborne car sailed thru the floors to find him.

No perfect answer, but underground always has the advantage.

[Conan71]

In-ground pools are common here, and a lot tougher to dig than a septic-tank-sized shelter.

Ive read the difference between being in a car and an above-ground shelter is that you have a chance of escaping in a car.
Joplin rescuers pulled bodies out of above-ground shelters that tore from their bolts, but by the same token, a man in a basement was killed when an airborne car sailed thru the floors to find him.

No perfect answer, but underground always has the advantage.

I wasn't doubting the veracity of your claim about Joplin, but rather looking for stats on above vs. below grade shelters and found this:

At least 24 people are dead after a powerful tornado tore through Moore, Okla., Monday. "Numerous neighborhoods were completely leveled," Sgt. Gary Knight of the Oklahoma City Police Department told the New York Times. According to Moore resident Ricky Stover, the twister even tore open his locked cellar door. Is anywhere safe in such a powerful tornado?

Yes. While there are several recorded instances of powerful storms ripping open the doors to storm cellars and other shelters, no such instance has been documented with a shelter tested and approved by the National Wind Institute (NWI) at Texas Tech University. While other storm shelters may be old or poorly designed in the first place, the shelters approved by the NWI are designed to withstand winds up to 250 mph, which includes nearly all recorded tornadoes (including Monday's) and most tornadoes rated as EF5s on the Enhanced Fujita scale. In the case of the EF5 tornado that touched down in Joplin, Mo., in 2011, the deadliest twister in decades, all 11 aboveground shelters in the area protected their occupants. In 1999, only one year after FEMA published its modern standards for in-residence shelters, an above-ground shelter survived the record-breaking F5 tornado around Oklahoma City, which also passed through Moore.

No idea if these were public shelters or safe rooms inside homes.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2013/05/oklahoma_tornado_storm_shelters_where_is_the_safest_place_in_a_tornado.html

Here's FEMA's codes regarding shelter construction:

http://www.fema.gov/safe-room-resources/fema-p-320-taking-shelter-storm-building-safe-room-your-home-or-small-business

Article I was reading with the link to FEMA which said the following:

I have friends in the area who said many homes in Moore, Oklahoma had been swept away down to the carpet with only a safe room left standing. Make sure whoever is installing your shelter builds it to FEMA P-320 Codes.

http://5newsonline.com/2013/05/28/garretts-blog-local-storm-shelter-companies/

And finally, an analysis by FEMA of the effectiveness of above-ground shelters.  Lots of good tornado geek reading.

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo32171.pdf

[RecycleMichael]

Here is a national Fox News story quoting my mother...it was also carried in hundreds of papers and TV broadcasts

http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/05/24/bulls-eye-for-awful-tornadoes-oklahoma-gets-outsized-share-natural-disasters/

Here is a report she did after the 2003 Moore tornadoes talking about surviving them in a residence...

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/research/qr/qr163/qr163.pdf

[Weatherdemon]

I had not heard about the above ground shelters being pulled off the slabs. If that occurred I would think it more likely that a vehicle being blown at 200MPH the shelter and pulled it off the slab.

That's my biggest fear of those. I'm not a structural engineer so I don't know for sure but I have been in those and would be scared shatless sitting in while everything around me is destroyed. I would much rather be underground listening to everything above me being destroyed if I was ever unfortunate enough to be in tornado.

The fact the Moore tornado took down part of an old truss bridge is unusual as that is something else I have never heard of happening in a tornado.

On being in a car, whatever gets you to your afterlife quickest I guess.


On schools, I'm not sure where to find these stats. Does anyone here know?
What is the percentage of schools ever hit by a tornado?
Percentage of schools hit by a tornado during school hours?
Percentage of schools hit by a EF4-EF5 tornado(less than 1% of all tornados) during school hours?

[Conan71]

Here is a national Fox News story quoting my mother...it was also carried in hundreds of papers and TV broadcasts

http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/05/24/bulls-eye-for-awful-tornadoes-oklahoma-gets-outsized-share-natural-disasters/

Here is a report she did after the 2003 Moore tornadoes talking about surviving them in a residence...

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/research/qr/qr163/qr163.pdf

Quoting Faux Snooze?  Really?

I had no idea your mother is a disaster consultant.  I need someone to follow me around and consult with me about all my little disasters on a daily basis.  I'll be anxious to read her report on the Moore 2003 tornado you linked to.

[Red Arrow]

I had no idea your mother is a disaster consultant. 

I wonder if raising Michael had anything to do with that.