Oklahama Disaster ....

[emordnilap]

There's the question of why you would knowingly choose to live in any area prone to frequent natural disasters.

The once-in-a-hundred years event may disrupt your life once - or twice if you're extremely unlucky - but every decade or more?

Follow the money, I suppose.

[vtsnowedin]

I must agree on the school construction. An indefensible lack of preparation in my view. Not only should the central corridors be constructed of reinforced concrete walls and ceiling but should have cut off walls a jogs designed in to keep tornado winds from sucking open the end doors and sweeping out the contents.
Something that members here might not appreciate is the extent of the "Great Plains" A virtually unbroken plane of land the extends from the Rio Grande in Texas north to Calgary Alberta and from the front range of the Rockies just west of Denver east to the Mississippi at St. Louis. This is flat and boring in the extreme and the saying goes that there is nothing to break the wind coming from the North Pole but a barbed wire fence.
This formation allows advancing weather cold fronts to over ride the warm air in place on the plains giving you miles of air that is upside down, cold on top hot on the bottom, then an up draft from a thunder storm pulls the plug and the hot air swirls up through the drain hole in the form of a a funnel cloud.
Most other places on the planet have much more variable terrain which breaks up the stratification long before this condition develops so the London burgs have little to worry about.

[kenneal - lagger]

We do have the occasional tornado but only very week ones, strong enough to do damage to roofs though. People have been killed by falling chimneys crashing through the roof.

[Adam1]

I wonder whether, rather than Oklahomans building ultra-reinforced buildings, they instead always build basements and build any above-ground floors to be of lightweight timber (suitably insulated) that can be re-built more cheaply. Roofs could be lightweight - maybe lots of green roofs.

[kenneal - lagger]

Light weight roofs and green roofs don't go together. The weight of a green roof ensures heavyweight roof timbers and also walls.

[Adam1]

True