Oklahoma City is now...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The trailer was enough for me.

Oh, it's a hoot, just not realistic. Helen Hunt's father built a storm shelter with a door that opened OUTWARD, FFS.

[FBM]

Durr. But then again, it's realistic that some people are that stoopid.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Durr. But then again, it's realistic that some people are that stoopid.

Yeah.

And Helen Hunt.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

(Reuters) - A powerful tornado devastated the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday, killing 24 people, including nine children, according to the Oklahoma medical examiner's office. At one point, as many as 91 were feared dead, but authorities have since scaled back the official death toll.

Here are the 10 deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history:

1. March 18, 1925 - Missouri/Illinois/Indiana - 695 dead

2. May 6, 1840 - Natchez, Mississippi - 317 dead

3. May 27, 1896 - St. Louis - 255 dead

4. April 5, 1936 - Tupelo, Mississippi - 216 dead

5. April 6, 1936 - Gainesville, Georgia - 203 dead

6. April 9, 1947 - Woodward, Oklahoma - 181 dead

7. May 22, 2011 - Joplin, Missouri - 158 dead

8. April 24, 1908 - Amite, Louisiana/Purvis, Mississippi - 143 dead

9. June 12, 1899 - New Richmond, Wisconsin - 117 dead

10. June 3, 1953 - Flint, Michigan - 115 dead

NOTE: These figures do not include a series of tornadoes in the southeastern United States in April 2011 that killed at least 346 people in seven states. However, some of the early events on this list, recorded before the era of comprehensive damage surveys, may have resulted from multiple tornadoes. Death counts for events in the 1800s and early 1900s should be treated as estimates.

SOURCE: Storm Prediction Center of National Weather Service's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "The 25 Deadliest Tornadoes," http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/killers.html

(Compiled by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

[Seth]

I wonder if schools in the area have storm shelters?

Or, if they did have them, perhaps there was not enough time to get the kids to them...

No, they do not.

They have storm shelters, but it isn't "cost effective" to build a shelter against the EF-5s.

Some of the newer ones do. I'm surprised that "safe rooms" or storm shelters aren't mandatory in every building and residential lot in Tornado Alley.

And it doesn't take all that much to protect against an EF5 tornado, all it takes is six inches of reinforced concrete. Every single home rebuilt in that area should be required to have a "bunker" in the basement, or at the core of the house, that's well-anchored to the ground (footers and stem walls, not just slabs) and is six sides of 6 inch reinforced concrete with a steel door. It doesn't need to be very big, and it can be designed in and even used as a mechanical room for the furnace and water heater (you do want a gas shutoff though).

Every trailer park should have two or three underground pre-fab steel group storm shelters, by law, or a buried storm shelter for everybody else in rural areas.

And EVERY school should be built with, or retrofitted with a reinforced concrete core shelter capable of holding everyone normally in the school, preferably several of them. The most convenient thing is to turn restrooms into bunkers.

Not that hard at all.
That ought to be code.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It should be, but it ain't because it would cause taxes to rise, and Oklahoma is a red state, so that is the kiss of death.

One of the OK senator is calling for no aid at all because people committed fraud after Sandy. Genius.

[Seth]

The trailer was enough for me.

Oh, it's a hoot, just not realistic. Helen Hunt's father built a storm shelter with a door that opened OUTWARD, FFS.

Same in "Where the Heart Is." But that's normal. Few people build them with doors that open downwards and in because it's too hard to close them. A properly built storm shelter doesn't really need that much of a door because, unlike the fiction in "Where the Heart Is" or "Twister," there's not enough airflow in an underground storm shelter to suck anyone out of it. For that to happen, the shelter would have to have an air INLET as big as the OUTLET at the other end, to create a venturi. That's one reason they warn against taking shelter under a highway bridge, it INCREASES the velocity of wind due to the venturi effect.

If the "Where the Heart Is" scene had actually happened, EVERYBODY in the shelter would have been sucked out. As for "Twister," the "tie yourself to the pipe and look up into the tornado" is complete shit. Not only would they have been sucked up, they would have been dismembered by flying debris. That was one of those "Oh, give me a fucking BREAK" moments (one of many) in that movie for me.

Movie drama.

The main reason for a bunker or storm shelter is to protect against flying debris, which is what kills and injures almost everyone. There's plenty of research being done on how to build concrete block walls that will withstand a 2x4 shot out of a cannon at 300 mph.

I go for drainage culverts when on the road.

[Jason]

AFAIK the inlet needs to be a proportionate size to the outlet, but not the same. The compression and rapid expansion caused by the flow differential is what creates the Venturi effect.. I've built a few Venturi-based blowtorches.

[Seth]

It should be, but it ain't because it would cause taxes to rise, and Oklahoma is a red state, so that is the kiss of death.

One of the OK senator is calling for no aid at all because people committed fraud after Sandy. Genius.

I can understand not wanting federal aid. It just makes the community more dependent. It's better if they do it themselves.

And if the people of Oklahoma want their children protected, then they will approve a SPECIFIC tax that's dedicated to that purpose.

The problem with most liberal legislators is that they do NOT want tax laws that bind the revenues to specific projects because they like to be able to fiddle and reallocate General Fund tax revenues to their own pet projects, the ones they think will get them votes.

The City of Boulder and Boulder County are perfect examples of how to impose such a tax. More than 40 years ago the city and county started Open Space programs and put tax issues on the ballots, long before Colorado's TABOR required everyone else to do so. The charters that established the programs mandated that ALL revenues so collected would be used for one thing, and one thing only: acquisition of Open Space lands by purchase from willing sellers.

As a result, in the last 40 years, neither the City of Boulder nor the County has ever had an open-space tax issue turned down by the voters. Ever.

Both HAVE had both general and specific tax increases for OTHER things, including education, turned down. And that's why ALL taxes should be REQUIRED to be voted on by the people (as Colorado's TABOR requires), and furthermore they should ALL be required to specifically state what item or project in the budget those taxes will be used for, and the legislature should be forbidden from reallocating any earmarked tax to ANY other project.

This way the citizens have real power over the public purse, and you'll see restored confidence in government because the system is set up to prevent jiggery-pokey and corruption by the legislature.

[Seth]

AFAIK the inlet needs to be a proportionate size to the outlet, but not the same. The compression and rapid expansion caused by the flow differential is what creates the Venturi effect.. I've built a few Venturi-based blowtorches.

You're right. It's the constriction at the center of the tube that creates the effect, so both the inlet and outlet have to have a diameter greater than the narrowed part of the tube to increase the velocity at the venturi point.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I won't reply, not in this thread.

[mistermack]

What strikes me, when looking at the news, is the high percentage of US houses made out of sticks.
Haven't they heard of the story of the three little piggies? "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down."

One woman was in the wreckage of her house, and the solution became obvious.
Everything was broken and flattened, except her gigantic fridge.
So if a tornado touches down, get in the fridge. You know it makes sense !

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What strikes me, when looking at the news, is the high percentage of US houses made out of sticks.
Haven't they heard of the story of the three little piggies? "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down."

One woman was in the wreckage of her house, and the solution became obvious.
Everything was broken and flattened, except her gigantic fridge.
So if a tornado touches down, get in the fridge. You know it makes sense !

Except that one woman and her seven month old child died in one of those.

[mistermack]

What strikes me, when looking at the news, is the high percentage of US houses made out of sticks.
Haven't they heard of the story of the three little piggies? "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down."

One woman was in the wreckage of her house, and the solution became obvious.
Everything was broken and flattened, except her gigantic fridge.
So if a tornado touches down, get in the fridge. You know it makes sense !

Except that one woman and her seven month old child died in one of those.

Yes, but that makes 22 who died, who were not in fridges.
Proves my point !

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What strikes me, when looking at the news, is the high percentage of US houses made out of sticks.
Haven't they heard of the story of the three little piggies? "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down."

One woman was in the wreckage of her house, and the solution became obvious.
Everything was broken and flattened, except her gigantic fridge.
So if a tornado touches down, get in the fridge. You know it makes sense !

Except that one woman and her seven month old child died in one of those.

Yes, but that makes 22 who died, who were not in fridges.
Proves my point !

How many of them were close to freezers large enough to present an attractive refuge, and how many would have chosen that refuge if it were available?