General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy can't they build a hill and then put a shelter below it?
I'm not an engineer, but if you can't dig down, seems you could build up and then underneath.
Anyone, know?
I live in massachusetts where almost every home has a basement.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)I'd rather we spend our taxes on that then building more military crap that we don't need.
quinnox
(20,600 posts)Don't they have a "safe" basement zone in schools built to withstand tornadoes in those places? This tragic event makes one wonder.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)It seems a school should have that also...
JPZenger
(6,819 posts)Apparently, a number of kids died in the basement.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,924 posts)because the water table is high in some places, and the soil in many areas is hard clay which is hard to excavate.
boston bean
(36,224 posts)Seems it should be required and the federal govt should foot the bill. At all public schools.
Lone_Star_Dem
(28,158 posts)Period. This is just common sense. Instead we're constantly defending education and wasting money on wars for profit.
Texasgal
(17,049 posts)although we do have storm shelter rooms in schools.
We are on limestone, there is no dirt.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)As is the challenge in Ohio.
RC
(25,592 posts)do it quickly and easily and for reasonable cost.
There is currently not one so get back to me when that happens and an f5 hits·
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)we always had fallout shelters in our schools. We'd have to go into the basement and duck and cover for tornado's and nuclear bomb drills. I don't think they build those into newer schools, though you'd think they would in tornado prone areas.
silverweb
(16,402 posts)[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]They all cost money.
I don't know if your idea would work, but I would think it's feasible in at least some areas.
Areas with high water tables require basements with waterproofing and sump pumps. Areas with bedrock require blasting. In high-risk areas, just DO it.
If individual homes can't all have secure tornado shelters, public buildings should be required to have them and should be accessible to everyone during tornado alerts.
Unfortunately, safety and preparedness have always taken a back seat to budgets.
Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)however, the monster that hit today....
boston bean
(36,224 posts)The safest by a long shot. At public schools in tornado prone areas they should be mandated. Mandated by the federal government with US tax payers footing the bill.
Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)you are talking about people who don't like to pay a lot of taxes...
And that isn't taking a shot at them. I live in this area and bond issues die on the ballot.
boston bean
(36,224 posts)Babies shouldn't be dying when we know the best way to survive these events. I know we are on the same side. I guess people with money sickness, like tea party zealots make me sick. The are immoral, IMHO.
Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)The damages to these types of events should be limited to property loss.
What good is all the information and technology that we have if we have to leave our children as sitting ducks with nowhere to go if they happen to get in the path of a monster like this? For no other reason than we don't want to pay enough in taxes to keep them safe?
It is immoral.
Our schools should be secured and safer than any other building in the country. Each and every school. Parents should know when they drop off their kids in the morning that they will be able to pick them up at the end of the day...and not have to identify their remains when, and if, they are found.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)I'm sorry...but people can afford to pay a few extra dollars on their taxes over a few years so their kids can be safe.
Yes there is poverty but the ones in poverty generally don't pay homeowners taxes.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)Get back to me when you can figure out how some town with 5000 people and a half dozen or more schools can pay for a half dozen multi-million dollar mass occupancy storm bunkers. Good grief, do you think people in the South don't care about their kids? You think they are stupid?
Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)I live in this area and I guarantee that the people don't want to pay taxes to improve the schools.
They shrink the school districts so you have 4 school districts in a 20 mile radius with 200 students each to minimize the taxable property.
Don't get all indignant when you come and spout the no-taxes mantra that the teabillies love. I know better.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)We were waiting to jump in the car and head south. Fortunately the storm heading my way has shifted north into Oklahoma so for now I'm good.
In any case I posed the challenge. DO THE MATH. Post it here and make your case. How much would it cost per year per person, in a town with 5000 people and a half dozen schools all needing multi-million dollar mass occupancy storm shelters.
Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)turned all of the land in between to taxable property for schools--eliminate the 6-figure salaries of all of the school hierarchy in their own little fiefdoms--the money is there. But not when you have apologists for those that refuse to pay school taxes.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)But I am just trying to keep this discussion grounded in the possible. For example, let's assume this storm shelter system in our mythical 5000 person town only cost 20 million installed. That's about 12,000 per family plus interest -- so an extra seven or eight hundred a year, for twenty years, for a shelter system that will almost certainly never be used. You are talking about basically doubling property taxes, and that doesn't cover maintaining the things.
I think there are probably better answers.
EDIT: I apologize if I came across as a dickhead. Kind of a stressful day so far.
LeftInTX
(25,677 posts)I don't get the impression that it's poor.
I know a lot of rich people who don't want to pay one penny of taxes. They will protest any infrastructure project around here.
boston bean
(36,224 posts)It's a national tragedy that can be prevented.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)We apparently cannot manage to fund free school lunches -- the main meal of the day for millions of poor children. We cannot manage to pay for that, and you think we can fund a hundreds of thousands of massive storm shelters?
Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)the republicans choose not to.
There is a huge difference in willfully withholding necessary tax dollars and just not having the money. The problem is the former, not the latter.
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)Horse with no Name
(33,958 posts)Stay safe!
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)Zoeisright
(8,339 posts)the ONLY way to survive is underground. Any houses rebuilt after the last four tornadoes hit that town in the last 15 years should have had underground shelter.
But I wouldn't expect much in the way of common sense zoning ordinances in Oklahoma.
okaawhatever
(9,478 posts)like on a hill and then the other side was where the windows were. Now though, with so much advance notice I think most schools let out. That may be why there isn't the precautions like before.
TheMightyFavog
(13,770 posts)Not that that neck of the woods is tornado prone, mind you, they did it because they were told by the architect that it would be a great way to save on heating and cooling costs.
We always jokingly referred to the school as "the bunker."
Unfortunately, a few years after the school was finished, this school started getting SERIOUS problems with mold.
The costs associated with fixing the building damn near bankrupted this small town district and there was even talk of disbanding the district and consolidating with nieghbors for a while.
boston bean
(36,224 posts)I can see how there could be problems with the whole school underground. But I mean a shelter built close to the school to be used for the duration of the storm only.
BainsBane
(53,093 posts)Not in Texas or South Florida. I'm not sure why.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)sand, silt, and clay. The water table is close to the surface because of this geology. We'd have water and/or toxic mold in our basements if we built them here.
Also, we don't have as much to worry about high-level tornadoes as we do hurricanes. You can see them coming for days and prepare (or evacuate.)
BainsBane
(53,093 posts)I lived in Florida and knew about hurricanes, of course. I also lived in Austin, TX, and the ground was unbelievably hard there, though some of the older homes have basements.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)Not far from there you have Enchanted Rock which is all granite. There is topsoil, of course, but it's shallow compared to the coasts. And full of rocks
kentauros
(29,414 posts)It's historical. They were used either for food storage or as additional rooms. They were never designed as shelters from inclement weather. If people used them that way in the past, it was spur of the moment and not a design concern.
And so, modern homes there get built the same way because people expect it. And then they use them as additional rooms or for storage
boston bean
(36,224 posts)kentauros
(29,414 posts)root cellar
And historically, people down here had cisterns, but they would never have been large enough to use as a shelter. Other than for the storage of rainwater, they were used mostly for keeping things cold or cool, like dairy products.
said "sellahs", spelled "cellars" Now they are used for storage or extra living space or both.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)You wouldn't want to use a basement as a shelter from a tornado as the structure above you could collapse. Shelters are usually placed away from structures, partly, too, because of the debris that will be all over the place once they can come out again.
I just hope there aren't people trapped in shelters because there's a car or other massive object on top of their exit door.
Jennicut
(25,415 posts)Mine pretty much has all the junk I keep meaning to get rid of, like cribs and a recliner chair that broke. Mine has flooded a few times from a hurricane and a blizzard after the snow melted. But I am so happy I live where it is commonplace and very feasible.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)I remember the basement well (it was the main TV room.) I also remember how damp it was most of the time
MADem
(135,425 posts)A big concrete egg, set halfway into the ground. Mound some dirt up and set the egg into it, then put more dirt on top of it and grow grass up there--it'll keep the place cool in summer, hell, kids could use it for sledding in winter. Enjoy big windows in the egg, but include steel "persiane" shutters that can be quickly lowered if a tornado is enroute.
Why people keep building matchboxes in a tornado zone is beyond me, and just dumb. Find an architectural methodology that works and is survivable--this shit is not going to get any better over time. The climate is changing, and it is getting less friendly.
Nay
(12,051 posts)with a base of a large reinforced cast concrete 'pipe' -- like a huge square culvert pipe -- so there are no walls to fall? No roof to fly off? It would be thick enough and heavy enough to not be moveable by wind at all. I'm no engineer, but frankly, if that was my kid's school, I'd BUY them a bigass culvert pipe and donate it.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Their buildings manage to survive sustained winds approaching 200 mph regularly. http://www.tornadoproofhouses.com/lessons.php#isitpossible
We can't use "summer gazebo" building practices in areas that get this kind of weather anymore. Too many people get hurt. Build it like you're preparing for a tai-fun!!!
Your giant concrete pipe is a great idea--and it would be architecturally interesting, as well. Put a couple pairs of massive steel doors at either end and Bob's Yer Uncle...
JCMach1
(27,582 posts)after the 1999 outbreak, I saw an outlet mall completely gone but for concrete slab... Steel beams that secured walls were twisted to pretzels. The same storm a few miles down the road I saw an entire 1/2 HS stadium of seats picked-up from the location and land in a field several miles down the road... relatively undamaged.
MADem
(135,425 posts)I'll bet those would survive without too much trouble. The tornado might even just stroll right over it.
http://www.tornadoproofhouses.com/
The technology for designing and building tornado-resistant houses has been around since 1963 almost half a century. It was first developed in America, not in continental North America, but instead in the American protectorate territory of the Marianas islands, primarily on the island of Guam. It utilizes the principle of "box-rigid-frame," a type of reinforced concrete shell design. This approach is described in an article titled "Disaster-Resistant Shell Houses" [PDF] in the American Concrete Institute's Concrete International magazine, published in May 2008. The article discusses in detail the sterling performance of reinforced concrete houses over the past half century impacted with numerous strong typhoons and powerful earthquakes on the islands in the region.
In 1962, Typhoon Karen roared across the island of Guam with recorded wind gusts up to 207 mph, cleaning the island of most of the conventionally constructed houses. Following an appeal to the U. S. government by the Guam governor, President John F. Kennedy directed the development of typhoon-resistant houses. In this effort, the president enlisted the help of Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Hospital fame. At the time he also was CEO of Kaiser Permanente Cement Company as well as a homebuilder in Hawaii. Mr. Kaiser asked Dr. Alfred A. Yee, a world-respected structural engineer and author of a number of articles for various technical magazines, to develop the structural design for the first typhoon-resistant house. It was quickly done and thousands of these houses have been subsequently built around the island including on the military reservations. And they are still being built.
The original houses used precast concrete walls which were fabricated at the building sites and tilted into position. The roofs utilized cast-in-place reinforced concrete. All of the elements of a house, floors, walls and roofs, were intimately connected with steel reinforcing bars in order to create a box, or shell. Instead of building storm shelters inside a house as is usually done in North America, the entire house becomes a storm shelter, a practice that was not used until the Guam typhoon-resistant reinforced concrete shell house concept was developed.
The concrete shells on Guam have performed without damage for fifty years. The only vulnerable features of such structures are the wall openings. Steel doors and window storm shutters are usually available from local building supply stores such as the Home Depot or Lowes. Special structural attention must be paid to the door mountings. As of the time of this writing [June 2012], foolproof protection of these openings, especially windows, does not yet appear to have completely matured. It is assumed that conventional metal garage doors will not survive a big tornado.
In 1993, Guam, also a frequent target of earthquakes caused by movement of ocean floor plates in the Pacific Ocean (often referred to as the "Ring of Fire" , was visited by a Richter 8.1 earthquake. There was no reported structural damage to a single reinforced concrete shell house.
The above site touts a different design, but it has the "concrete" concept in common. The whole 'sticks of wood and drywall' concept needs to die out in that area--it's a recipe for disaster.
As we've seen.
JCMach1
(27,582 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)A concrete structure is the way to go. It's got to be built to typhoon standards, though, with straps on the roof and steel reinforcements and so on...there are buildings on Guam and Okinawa that have survived wind gusts close to 200 mph and sustained winds of 80 or more.
We do know how to build these kinds of structures. We should at least make the schools in tornado-prone areas typhoon-proof; that way, they'd survive these tornadoes without too much fuss and people would have a shelter to run to in the event of emergency.
They have some horrible weather in the far east, typhoons and super typhoons. The "good" buildings survive without any issue, and fatalities in places like Japan/Okinawa and Guam, where preparedness is key and ongoing, even with really awful weather, are very, very rare.
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,349 posts)An outlet mall is a bad example of sturdy construction. Most are built on the cheap - steel or no steel. They are still flimsy. Paper thin walls just act as the sail to break the mast (steel).
Not much beats steel (for tensile strength) reinforced concrete (for mass and rigidity). There is a reason they make bunkers (above and below ground) out of it.
If lived in one of those tornado prone areas I would be investing a few hundred dollars in concrete and rebar to make me a shelter.
A great project for a local college would be a design contest for low cost, easy to build, effective, above ground shelters.
JCMach1
(27,582 posts)Now, double that...
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,349 posts)No comparison whatsoever.
Even that brick would have benefited from a little more steel reinforcement but that's a whole other issue.
In your video, there is another building behind the yellow building. The blue building has some simple roll-up-door modifications that enable it to withstand the same test.
But that is just confusing the issue because, as I said, there is no comparison between unreinforced (or even reinforced) masonry and reinforced concrete. Also, the institute conducting these tests isn't testing for storm shelters - they are testing for cost effective construction practices on widely used (and insured) commercial businesses.
See:
That said. Isn't it amazing what a little strategically placed steel (clips, strong ties, steel plates) and glue can accomplish?
&feature=endscreen&NR=1
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Bigmack
(8,020 posts)... high water table... etc.
I know that if I lived in tornado alley, I'd dig a goddam shelter with a pick and shovel if I didn't have the money to rent whatever equipment was needed.
Cement block or septic tank underground.. cement slab... one manhole with a loop to come-along the manhole to the inside of the shelter.
I don't care how small the town is... the goddam schools need shelters. Local volunteer labor... local cement company donations and rebar... at the least.
MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)Although, I grew up in a tornado prone section of Georgia where the soil was sandy and the water table was high. Nobody had basements.
boston bean
(36,224 posts)Know what I mean. Like I said I'm not an engineer but seems it could be done.
MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)presumably in the basement?
boston bean
(36,224 posts)Building a mound, a hill, an placing a shelter under the built up mound, hill.
MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)loyalsister
(13,390 posts)One guy in a neighborhood had one and wouldn't let anyone else in.
It would have to outsize the Astrodome considerably! How would you decide who can get in?
There was a trend in the 70s to build homes "into" hills.
piedmont
(3,462 posts)JCMach1
(27,582 posts)The years I lived there, I MADE SURE the rental homes I stayed in had basements. The last one was a basement that doubled as a 1950's fall-out shelter... 4-6ft of reinforced concrete...
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)They sure don't want anybody in the gubmint telling them what to do.
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)Yep that is us for sure. Oh, here is a word for the day for you
Compassion
Noun
Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others: "the victims should be treated with compassion".
Isn't that a funny word. Bet you never heard it before.
titaniumsalute
(4,742 posts)You typically only get 3-4 minutes of head's up. By the time you gather your family and try to get to the community shelter it may way too late.