Dancing with the Devil (Why no basements?)

[Karla Dorman]

Yesterday's outbreak leaves me wondering (AGAIN) why no basements or underground shelter in some parts "down the Alley"?

Having none is like dancing with the devil: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This pretty much describes my feelings:

DANCE WITH THE DEVIL (c) Karla Dorman, 2009

Living where we do, you'd think
underground shelter would be
mandatory: nope. Not cost-
effective or the ground shifts
too much or they flood or -- have
heard all the excuses as
to why none, here. What is one
life worth? What is the price for
a little peace of mind? Too
damn much, apparently. And
so, we dance with the Devil
and pray he doesn't kill us
in the middle of the night:
what other choice do we have?!?

EVERY TIME a warning issued, they say: "The safest place to be is in a basement." If none, interior room, lowest floor.

Two thin walls separating you from the howler, outside. Doesn't exactly make one feel comfortable, especially since I've already lost my roof once in this complex (1996): IN WINTER! Can't afford to move.

Teenytiny, claustrophobic-sized half bath: get me and twin sis in there, WHAT room for a mattress?!? Pillows and blankets - what good are they going to do against a strong tornado?!? What are they going to do, rock you to sleep?

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest: my pet peeve since moving to Texas 26 years ago, from a place where EVERYONE had a basement.

Your thoughts?

 

[Scott Weberpal]

I don't think the question is why aren't there more basements, as there are many alternatives; storm cellars, tornado rooms, etc. Basements aren't built in that region for a few reasons...

1) it is much more cost effective to build a small cellar or safe room than try and build a basement in the soil in Oklahoma. The labor cost trying to excavate for a basement in that type of soil/bedrock would be enormous. Not to mention, the soils are poorly drained which would lead to a LOT of mold/flooding problems in basements which are surrounded by wet soils.

2) Building codes further south don't require you to excavate the homes footings as far underground (below the frost line) as they do further north. In the north you may have to dig 4-7' to meet code requirements, where in Oklahoma it may only be 1-3'.

Basements aren't the issue. However, having some sort of storm shelter (above ground or underground) should be a requirement in new home construction.

 

[Steve Miller]

To further support Scott's post, I just read this a few days ago:

"There's a rational explanation for the typical lack of basements in the South and there prevalence in the North. The further North you go, the deeper the building codes require you to excavate to place a home's footing below the frost line. If you're excavating 3-4' already, plus placing the house 2' out of the ground, it's foolish to not dig an extra foot or so and just create a basement. In the South, the codes may only require footings to be 1-2' deep, and therefore the addition of a basement would require much more excavation (and therefore cost) beyond what's required."

My wife and I moved to Moore, OK from Tulsa a couple years ago. In Tulsa we had no basement, cellar, saferoom, etc. There would be no way I would live in ground zero of tornado ally and not have a below-ground shelter. $3,500.00 and two city permits later, I have a shelter in my garage. It was a pain in the butt that took not only the wad of cash but a lot of running around to get appropriate permits. This is probably something most people would rather not do. There are no insurance or tax incentives available either...
I'm glad I have it though and hope I never have to use it.

 

[rdale]

Just about every household in this country can experience an unexpected blackout. Remember a few summers back when the northeast had a big one? Here in Lansing, we were just a few hours away from losing our water supply. How many people that day (after 9/11 even) had a 3-day supply of food and water as everyone in emergency management recommends. Probably not too many. How many do now? More, but still probably not too many.

Why? "Because we survived the blackout, so why change?" It's a big mentality issue...

I don't view her question as disrespectful. On the contrary - THIS is the time to call for change! This is the time for Oklahomans to say "Our trailer parks should have shelters and alert systems!" Remember the Evansville tornado that killed a little boy? His mom used that event to push for mandatory weather radios in manufactured homes. May not have been the best use of resources, but it wouldn't have happened had that incident never occurred.

 

[Karla Dorman]

From Steve Miller OK:

$3,500 dollars and two city permits later ...

Think you hit one of the nails on the head. Expense and work, involved, the red tape.

Not all of us can afford to have shelters built: I think they should already be in place! Live in government housing. They will not LET you make additions to the apartment. You have a strict code to follow.

They renovated the apartment complex two years ago. I tried like thunder to get them to put in a safe room, nope, nothing doing. So sorry. "Against the rules."

Like I said, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sad.

 

[Justin Teague]

I don't intend to speak for Lanny on this matter, but I think I understand where he is coming from.

Quote A (In reference to people in Oklahoma)

"I lived through 14 torndaders already and none of them every kilt me so why worry now".

Quote B (In reference to residents of the Northeast)

"Because we survived the blackout, so why change?"

If I were to really look into this, I suppose I could get the idea that Rob might be painting everyone in the south with the redneck brush while portraying residents of the Northeast as more educated. I honestly don't think that he meant anything by it. I make redneck comments all the time and I live here! But then again, maybe that makes me a redneck.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

So you mandate trailer park and apartment complex tornado shelters. That's a great idea.... It has happened before in certain townships and such but then there were no further instructions with the mandate or any real penalties for not keeping up with them. Tornado sirens fire off and you haul ass with your family to the tornado shelters in your trailer park to find they are as full of water as can be or if they happened to be able to keep water out you find them full of brown recluse spiders, junk someone threw in there or the floor is covered with used needles, used condoms, dead animals or full of broken glass from the last party down there.

If you are going to push for mandatory shelters there needs to be specifications to be followed and inspections from the city government to make sure it is happening and there needs to be fines that are extreme enough that the landlord do not dare ignore the upkeep on them. There also needs to be some kind of protection for the lot/complex owners should something happen to a tenant on the way there or during the tornado (if they have kept up with the mandate to put them there).

Then if the people choose not to go because they are so immune to the tornado warnings sounded even if the tornado was in the next county it will be their fault.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

I personally don’t buy into the “Your Dancing With the Devil” if you don’t have a shelter stuff that comes up every time there is a tornado with fatalities. While every single one is extremely tragic (all deaths are) there are relatively few deaths from tornadoes every year. Of those relatively few, its hard to say how many less there would be, even if everyone had a shelter. Even if people have shelters, some folks are still going to not hear, not heed and ignore the warnings, and above that a good portion of tornado deaths occur outside of peoples homes in cars and elsewhere. Now while likely not the case, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and say storm shelters would prevent a large majority of the tornado fatalities; still, given the large total investment it would take for such a task, compared to the relatively small chance that it will some day actually save you life, I don’t think the economics add up. If safety/life saving is your goal, some people have larger issues that their limited financial resources would be better applied, for example health insurance. If you tallied what the total cost would be to install a storm shelter in every home in every area prone to seeing a tornado, and then tallied up the amount of lives you would save, I think you would find you could spend that money elsewhere and get a better $ to life ratio. Again its hard if not at times impossible to put a $ sign on a human life, though when resources are limited you have to allocate them and use them where they are most efficient, and for most folks money is a resource that is limited. That being said, I would never tell anyone with the resources, to not build a storm shelter, and every place that I will ever live will be equipped; I just don’t think it’s fair/right to say “Your dancing with the devil” or that every home needs to have one.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

I posted my thoughts on this in another thread similar to this, but will post them here.

The chance of any single person taking a direct hit by a tornado is very slim, I do not remember what the exact number is but a person has a better chance at winning the lottery than they do of taking a direct hit from a tornado. While I am not saying it is a good mentality to have, it is easy to understand why people believe that it won’t ever happen to them. Think about it, most people will go their whole life without ever seeing a tornado, hell.. we intentionally chase storms that produce tornadoes and yet sometimes don’t see any on a day when tornadoes occurred so I can’t really blame people for having that mentality, nothing you can really do to change their way of thought until it does happen to them.

People will ignore tornado warnings despite the number of people who die each year from them just as people will continue to ride in a car without a seatbelt even though countless people who die each year in automobile accidents could have survived if they had worn it.

It’s not a mentality society has with tornadoes only, but with a lot of other things as well. The fact is, people do not like to think that bad things can happen to them.<O</O

 

[rdale]

It’s not a mentality society has with tornadoes only, but with a lot of other things as well.

Very true. There's a local group called Do1Thing and they've done a lot to change the way people go about preparing for a disaster. In the past, training was "make your 3-day kit, prepare a phone tree, plan your escape route" and so on. And nobody did that.

Now our emphasis is on doing one thing per month, that over time will add up to make you and your family even better prepared. That's seemed to be more successful for obvious reasons. And a grade-school curriculum is in early planning. Take a look - http://do1thing.us

Back to the original topic - if I lived in a house that had no tornado protection, I'd have MULTIPLE ways of getting any tornado warnings "just in case" the sirens don't sound. Or they are too late.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

You can stick my inlaws into the who cares category. I 'm not sure I'll ever understand it. To their credit, they watch the news and listen for warnings, but have no shelter other than a closet in their house (or a way of receiving warnings when sleeping). Lone Grove was literally 3mi down the road from them. I call it "God's Will" syndrome.

Best I can figure is they feel it's so rare that if it does hit, it's up to God whether it's their time or not.

 

[Darren Addy]

...it's up to God whether it's their time or not.

Calvinism is alive and well!

 

[Dan Robinson]

Joey is right - this is a phenomenon of human nature. It's the same reason many people don't wear seat belts, motorcycle helmets or life jackets. Either they downplay the threat, or they know the danger and just make a decision to ignore it, treating the possible outcome as an acceptable risk. Particularly if there is some expense, inconvenience or discomfort involved.

The other factor is that the probability of a direct tornado strike for any given house in the Plains is very low. Higher than in other parts of the country, yes, but still very low. Even in 'tornado alley', there are myriad other factors that are more likely to result in injury or death - and people don't take those seriously, either. For instance, in Oklahoma a person is far more likely to die from a car accident in the winter than from a tornado. Yet many still don't wear seat belts, a simple thing that would prevent as many as 1/3 of traffic fatalities, maybe more. If people won't wear seat belts, they aren't going to build tornado shelters.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Really thinking about it, I think probably one of the most effective measures that could be made, in attempt to at least get a few more people to heed warnings, is a campaign by the NWS with assistance from local media. You always hear them pushing to get people to heed warnings, but now they kind of have a new card to play; By pushing the increase in warning precision over the last couple years and how the new warning system uses polygons highlighting only areas that WILL be at risk from the storm. I hate to use "fear" as a tool to get action, but I agree with a lot of what has been said, people don't think it will happen to them, and a lot of that mentality has been created over the years, thanks to MANY false alarm warnings. Many times, I remember as a young child Tornado Warnings would be issued for my county and subsequently the sirens would sound, even back then I was able to interpret radar, and recall SEVERAL occasions when, despite the warnings and sirens blaring in town, the storm was at least 20 miles away, on the other side of the county. This scenario played out across the plains for many many years, while likely just a small part of the reason people still don't heed warnings, I think with some campaigning regarding the new precision and accuracy of warnings, some of that "oh we’re always under a warning and nothing happens" can be avoided; as people will begin to understand when they hear the warnings for their area now, it's more likely they will be directly impacted, thanks to the increased warning accuracy and the new method of drawing the warnings. Still going to have the same problem of people being under a warning and then not being impacted by a tornado, though at least now, normally most everyone (at least a much larger percentage) under a tornado warning are at risk, as opposed to several years ago when you could be tornado warned and have a storm 20 miles away moving away. Perhaps using the increase in warning accuracy as a “fear” tool, would increase the number of people who heed warnings, even if just slightly….

 

[Paul Hadfield]

When we moved to C IL from PA about 12 years ago, we were among the "how come there are no basements?" crowd. Eventually learning about the exceptionally high water table for being so near to sea level made sense as to why. In order for a property to have a basement here it must be at a certain elevation. Even then as evident by the cracks and bulges in the foundation of the home we rented last, height is not a guarantee. Central Illinois is one big glacial deposit and I don't know how it is elsewhere but if up and down the Great Plains is anything similiar, it would be foolish to have basements planted within such soft substrate. I know this has been covered but just wanted to throw in my $.02.

As for the point about heeding warnings which this thread seems to have morphed into, my question is this... Whose to say those affected and unfortunately suffered catastrophic loss didn't in fact heed the warnings? Heeding a warning is not a guarantee that one won't experience tragedy despite their best attempt at protection. To conclude that those who are dealt the short end fail by their own ignorance is a horrible assumption. For example, despite our collective knowledge of wx, we are armed with every bit of information that is available. There is still the very real possibility that due to infinite unpredictability, something may go terribly wrong on a chase and we might not make it back to submit a report. Laying blame on a lack of warning or access to adequate shelter may seem rational and comforting but until we are able to get inside someone's head to hear them say "I ignored the warning" or "I heeded the warning and still suffered loss", we should never speculate. After all, we weren't there and it certainly wasn't us but it very well could have been or may eventually be.

edit: and I apologize for jumping in because these topics are not fun and perhaps I shouldn't have. Seriously though, as we go into this season at a time when the general public is more "aware" than at any other point in history, can we please at least try giving people the benefit of a doubt?