Whether you seek refuge in a safe room or closet, there are additional precautions you can take.
According to a recent story published by The Birmingham News, gear such as a bike helmet, an infant car seat, sturdy shoes or boots and a heavy quilt or coat can offer extra protection from shards of glass, splinters and other airborne objects.
The National Weather Service has a list of items to consider when stocking your safe room or shelter.
Mobile Homes
Generally, mobile home occupants should seek safe shelter elsewhere, as a mobile home offers little protection from a tornado.
According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average lead time for tornado warnings is 13 minutes.
Smith, Doswell and most of the meteorological community believe this is sufficient lead time to get to safety as long as the decision to leave is carried out immediately, you know exactly where to go and the shelter is not too far away.
There are some people who do not have a means of transportation, are handicapped or simply have no place to go.
Sometimes even experienced storm chasers are fooled.
Doswell states, "Escaping a tornado in a vehicle is not recommended unless the absence of traffic and the availability of road options allow you to move quickly at right angles relative to the tornado's path."
Plan Ahead
The meteorological community including the National Weather Service and AccuWeather.com provide heads-up alerts sometimes days in advance of potential severe weather and tornado outbreaks.
However, planning ahead should not wait until the day of an expected outbreak or during the heart of the severe weather season. Tornadoes can occur at any time of the year, and any time of the day.
In the case of mobile homes, or other storm-vulnerable housing, planning ahead as far as possible is necessary in terms of constructing, locating and traveling to a safe area.
It should be the topic of community, family and workplace discussion. There may already be approved safe areas and information available within your township, school or job site.
You Can Survive a Tornado: Take Responsibility!
People should assume the worst will happen when a tornado warning is issued.
According to Smith,"People need to take responsibility for their safety. Trust the warnings. You might spend some time in a shelter unnecessarily on occasion, but the tornado warnings have become good enough that they need to be taken seriously."
According to Doswell, "If schools and workplaces have no plan (for tornadoes), people should demand that a plan be developed."
If you are building a new home, consider the addition of an approved safe room or nearby outdoor, in-ground storm shelter with adequate means of ventilation and drainage.
If you live in a mobile home park, consider approaching the owner as a group about building a storm shelter.
A concrete storm shelter, seen Friday, May 7, 1999, was part of the construction project at a new mobile home park built near 50th Street and Hydraulic in Wichita, Kan. The city requires trailer parks with 20 or more homes to have a storm shelter. (AP Photo/Cliff Schiappa)
In light of the trend of fatalities over the years during tornado outbreaks, there have been vast improvements in public awareness thanks to advanced warnings in the public and private sector.
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9 Comments
Add CommentSurvived the Joplin tornado by going into the basement. The funnel took most of the upstairs away and dropped the chimney in the front room . . . opposite end of the basement where we were. Heating ductwork and floor joists crashed down, but we were safe at the other end up against the patio. Everyone came through, but the place was blitzed.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you have insurance, get destroyed, and can rebuild.... build smarter next time. Pass the word. Dead people = poor people or stupid rebuilders.
'If you are building a new home' build monolithic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.monolithic.com/topics/benefits-survivability
No, I'm not a paid representative of Monolithic, Inc...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"there have been vast improvements in public awareness thanks to advanced warnings in the public and private sector."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently not enough awareness, such a lack of awareness, in fact, that people don't know that for at least the past 40 years one could build an entire home that can withstand a direct impact from an F5 and survive as habitable after the storm passes... and all the people and possessions within can be safe.
That being the case, anyone who has built a new home then died in it in the past 40 years due to a tornado (or nearly any natural disaster) has died as a result of their ignorance.
And yea, it pisses me off. Insurance rates are higher, casualties are higher, waste of resources is higher... stupidity PISSES me off.
Why do I even bother?? (assumes keening petulant whine)--> People don't like domes..... I'd neeeever live in a dome, they're ugly. No one wants to live in a round house!
Funny enough, it's really really hard to live in a "beautiful" rectangular or square house in a tornado, too.
Think about that.
Think about this, too... Birds and reptiles lay round eggs, sure, because they don't have rectangular cloacas, but also because round is stronger, so strong that extremely thin eggshells can hold up the weight of a man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRaindrops falling from the sky reach the ground unbroken because they assume a spheroid shape on the way down, the wind just flows around them leaving them unscathed.
Gas bubbles in water assume spheroid shapes because they're the most stable shape, same with most types of living cells...
Bathyscaphes reach the deepest parts of the ocean, with men inside, 1100 atmospheres and survive intact, even James Cameron is going to the deepest part of the ocean in a few weeks in one...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120308-james-cameron-deepest-mariana-trench-challenger-science-sub/
ROUND is stronger, and round + steel-reinforced concrete is stronger than either alone.
Steel-reinforced concrete domes = Monolithic.
Get smart people, or get dead.
Why not build geodesic domes for above ground shelters. Just deeply anchored. See "Desert Domes" for build your own models. A fiberglass kit only requires two sizes of triangles, to make hexagons and pentagons which form a dome when appropriately fastened together. Buckminster Fuller domes have survived the world over.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy aunt in Mississippi just bought a tornado shelter, with all those storms down there now, she wanted to be prepared. She says she loves it and feels so much safer now. She said it was more comfy than she’d expected, too. It even has carpeting lol! She found them on this site www.survive-a-storm.com ... pretty neat :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat really gets me upset is that those kids died needlessly. They had plenty of warning and time to get to a shelter but the good leaders of Oklahoma and Moore didn't think their lives were worth enough to spend the paltry sum it would have cost to protect them.
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