Moore, OK

[Gnam]

51 dead, including 20 kids. 40 additional fatalities, mostly kids, will be announced tomorrow. :(

Those poor parents. It's like the neighborhood was erased.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/20/us/severe-weather/index.html

[Kiwifan]

Have seen the coverage on CNN, so so sad. Our thoughts go out to you folk tonight, you've had too many hits this year. :cry:

Can't begin to imagine the horror those folks must have gone through today.....

[cameraman]

The number went to 91 around midnight and it will go higher with daylight.

[cameraman]

Or much lower as it turns out. There's a whole lot of confusion going on and the confirmed death toll has dropped to 24.

[cameraman]

The thing that I don't understand, beyond that it would cost a bit of money, it why all schools in places like tornado alley do not have true tornado shelters. They might not be pretty but the semi-sunken dirt covered quonset hut isn't all that expensive. Along the same lines why don't the building codes mandate a tornado shelter dugout under all those cookie cutter subdivisions built on slab foundations? That town has been hit twice in 20 years and every single year some towns will get hit. The bathtub is better than nothing but you could be a whole lot safer.

[Gnam]

Didn't some of those kids drown in the basement? Sometimes you can't win.

I'm thinking everyone should live/work in steel reinforced concrete domes.

[cameraman]

Didn't some of those kids drown in the basement? Sometimes you can't win.

I'm thinking everyone should live/work in steel reinforced concrete domes.

********. A properly built shelter would not have flooded either.

[dando]

I had commented to Elmo that a nuke would have done less damage. Not far off the mark.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130521/DA6E01EG2.html

-Kevin

[nrc]

I'm happy that early casualty estimates turned out to be overstated. Looking at the devastation I'm surprised that the numbers weren't higher.

[dando]

I'm happy that early casualty estimates turned out to be overstated. Looking at the devastation I'm surprised that the numbers weren't higher.

Yup. Volunteered @ the girls' school today. Eery hearing the Wed tornado siren test @ noon. I saw a walk-through of the school (or what's left of it) this AM on Today, and was just amazed the count wasn't worse.

-Kevin

[cameraman]

Now people are beginning to talk about real tornado shelters for midwestern schools... I bring this up because about ten years ago those of us in Salt Lake City (proper, not the valley) voted to replace just about every school building in the city because 95% of them were seismic deathtraps. Salt Lake City has never had a measurable earthquake since the settlers started taking records but there is a 600' elevation drop from the east side to the west side that is a fault line, one of these days Salt Lake is going to pop an 11 on the Richter scale:eek: and make those Californians and their San Andreas fault look like pansies. Never the less without ever having had so much as a tremor (saving all that energy for one massive kerblamo) we entirely replaced the better part of 20 school campuses in 6 years. So it pisses me off when I see all these midwest towns with nothing at all in the way of shelters because it is "too expensive". ********, we built all new buildings without any federal or state funds. We just decided to eat it and voted to fund it with our property taxes. They're all done now (bonds aren't but the buildings are:\) and our kids have vastly safer and much nicer schools. If we can do it so can everyone else because we sure as hell ain't anything like rich.

[Indy]

Where there is a will... A few years ago my wife and I visited her (Southern state) elementary school and they were still teaching classes in the same "temporary" trailers that she endured in the 1970's. The main building, which they somehow never found the funds to expand or update, was built in the 1950's.

It is partly a philosophical problem, the idea that government is all evil and that society should be about "every man for himself." It is also a problem of a culture of many people who have never known modern standards, so they fail to see how much better things could be. Overall, though, I think the further from the coasts you get, the more people view change very suspiciously. "Progress" is a dirty word in places like that. Indiana is bad enough in this regard (trust me, the stupidity runs deeper than racing), but Oklahoma makes Indiana look cosmopolitan by comparison.

[Elmo T]

I see these arguments every day with building code enforcement. There are so many "stakeholders" in play, it gets insane. I don't even know where to begin. Builders, gov't at all levels, insurance companies, realtors, develops, the shelter mfgs, homeowners, home buyers, people selling their homes.

People argue about why they have to put a guard rail around their deck that is 5ft off the ground, fences around swimming pools, smoke detectors in their new addition. Builders complain that they can't sell these expensive houses with all the new safety features. Yet California's sprinkler requirement has not stopped new home sales: New-Home Sales Blossom Amid Supply Gap (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324874204578440590064353164.html)

People are arguing that FEMA (gov't in general I guess) isn't paying for storm shelters - or that the lottery type program for residents is flawed. Oklahoma does not mandate storm shelters at schools. Is requiring a school to build a storm shelter an unfunded mandate? Who should pay?

I've seen school districts bend over backwards to avoid putting fire sprinklers in a school. How often do we see school fires, so why install them, right? :shakehead

Builders fight - fight hard - whenever more stringent codes are discussed. Adding $$$ to the cost will force many home buyers out the market is the mantra. Mandate storm shelters for each home? New homes only? What about existing homes? Is a storm shelter a safety feature to promote OR an added $5K on the cost of the home which prices it out of the buyer's range?

Just like residential fire sprinklers, the statistics will show that the shelters work and lives will be saved. The question is whether we have the will to make it happen.

As a side note - and relating to fires - vastly more people die in fires each year in this country. More than all natural disasters combined. And there is no ground swell of support for MORE fire sprinklers. Worse yet, most of the fires are actually preventable. Yet there is little support for more fire prevention training. :confused:

[Elmo T]

Updated satellite view:

Moore OK Tornado Damage (http://apps.npr.org/moore-oklahoma-tornado-damage/)

[Andrew Longman]

Elmo, your discussion of sprinklers got me thinking about Detroit's position on auto safety.

For years the Big Three resisted any and all efforts to improve safety. I remember reading an article in Motor Trend (or the like) in the mid-70s about a GM study that showed talk of mandatory airbags was unnecessary because a review on thousands of accidents showed that it was almost impossible to get killed in a car accident so long as you wore your seatbelt (which most of all prevented ejections). In the most serious accidents, and airbag wasn't going to make a difference in survivability.

Then comes along Iacocca and his effort to lead Chrysler out of their (first) bailout and he is trying to find a way to sell his crappy, boring K cars and Omnis. So he puts a drivers side airbag in each car they sell because they "care about their customers" and it instantly becomes a distinctive and compelling difference between Chrysler and the competition. Even when manufacturers began to be required to include passive restraint systems, most only put those crappy automatic belt systems that grabbed your hair, etc.

Now manufacturers can't seem to put enough airbags in because consumers have come to view safety as not just a competitive advantage but a "greens fee" for a company to even be considered for business.

As for housing, I expect that in the coming decades buyers will increasingly expect a minimum level of energy efficiency and tech enabled features in homes. With that I think there is an opportunity for them to think about fire and security in general (incuding sprinklers) as people start to value more than just granite countertops and hot tubs. At least I hope so.

[Tifosi24]

Pennywise and pound foolish. The neighboring unit in my office deals with building code stuff and the whining I hear about is similar to what you see. The cost issue involving safety equipment (say a storm shelter) is the worst argument ever from a builder. It is a selling feature, because any sane person will eventually put a shelter in. If you are buying new, the extra cost (and the $5k I keep hearing people talk about seems insanely high, but what do I know) can get rolled into your 30-year mortgage, which is a few bucks a month, versus thousands out of pocket later. I know doing it yourself is technically cheaper, but a good sales person will talk you out of it, plus you know it is there from the word go. Excuse X, Y, or Z doesn't make you put it off until it is too late.


I see these arguments every day with building code enforcement. There are so many "stakeholders" in play, it gets insane. I don't even know where to begin. Builders, gov't at all levels, insurance companies, realtors, develops, the shelter mfgs, homeowners, home buyers, people selling their homes.

People argue about why they have to put a guard rail around their deck that is 5ft off the ground, fences around swimming pools, smoke detectors in their new addition. Builders complain that they can't sell these expensive houses with all the new safety features. Yet California's sprinkler requirement has not stopped new home sales: New-Home Sales Blossom Amid Supply Gap (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324874204578440590064353164.html)

People are arguing that FEMA (gov't in general I guess) isn't paying for storm shelters - or that the lottery type program for residents is flawed. Oklahoma does not mandate storm shelters at schools. Is requiring a school to build a storm shelter an unfunded mandate? Who should pay?

I've seen school districts bend over backwards to avoid putting fire sprinklers in a school. How often do we see school fires, so why install them, right? :shakehead

Builders fight - fight hard - whenever more stringent codes are discussed. Adding $$$ to the cost will force many home buyers out the market is the mantra. Mandate storm shelters for each home? New homes only? What about existing homes? Is a storm shelter a safety feature to promote OR an added $5K on the cost of the home which prices it out of the buyer's range?

Just like residential fire sprinklers, the statistics will show that the shelters work and lives will be saved. The question is whether we have the will to make it happen.

As a side note - and relating to fires - vastly more people die in fires each year in this country. More than all natural disasters combined. And there is no ground swell of support for MORE fire sprinklers. Worse yet, most of the fires are actually preventable. Yet there is little support for more fire prevention training. :confused:

[emjaya]

From the storm today

http://pixpipeline.com/s/a26a3351afa3.jpg (http://pixpipeline.com/d/a26a3351afa3.jpg)

:eek:

[SteveH]

From the storm today

http://pixpipeline.com/s/a26a3351afa3.jpg (http://pixpipeline.com/d/a26a3351afa3.jpg)

:eek:

Holy crap