In the most scientific way possible and to quote my meteorology professor. Hurricanes are spinning blowy things, tornados are spinning sucky things. Hurricanes push shit over, tornados lift things up.

@WhittyPics

2 жыл бұрын

One is a shotgun and the other is a rifle.

@mikefochtman7164

2 жыл бұрын

@@WhittyPics Or the difference between a 410 filled with shot and a 410 gauge loaded with a slug. Same charge of powder, very different result. 😉

@lwilton

2 жыл бұрын

It's really important to recognize that difference between blow and suck, and most people probably never even realize there is a difference. A structure that could withstand the overpressure of an A bomb going off 5000 feet directly overhead with no damage might be completely destroyed by a tornado that causes it to explode from the inside out. Withstanding even a sudden partial vacuum isn't at all easy.

@pubcollize

2 жыл бұрын

@@lwilton that's a good way to put it

@jerryvanderwier2310

2 жыл бұрын

Incorrect though. Neither will suck you up. The low pressure is far to low to pick a person up by itself. They blow, which can lift you up, or pile water in front of it. While both are basically wind vortices, an average hurricane is 100,000 times more powerful than an average tornado. They are also created differntly and need differnt conditions to generate and thrive. A huricane can create hundreds of tornados, but it is impossible for a tornado to create a hurricane. While on average a hurricane has lower wind speeds, they however also also usually produce damage through costal tidal flooding, regional flooding from heavy rain, and unexpected flash flooding from heavy rain in hilly areas. Due to the very large area of damage from hurricanes, disaster aide may be much longer in coming. Hurricanes are much greater threats to power and water systems, which can have devestating impacts to cities and even countries weeks or even years after they pass. Hurricanes can often result in tens of billions of dollars of damage, but a tornado is very unlikely to even do 1 billion. Hurricanes may directly impact a specific area for days and threaten it for even longer, while a tornado usually lasts minutes or even seconds.

One critical difference, though, between a hurricane versus a tornado is the amount of warning you get. Typically with hurricanes you have days of notice and can plan accordingly (e.g. pack up and head to higher ground). Tornados, on the other hand can happen out of the blue, often with minimal warning. They can strike at a moments notice and if you aren't in a safe spot your world can be turned upside down.

@lesleylesley5821

2 жыл бұрын

One of the men interviewed said he went outside and said to a friend "there's a train coming" the next thing he knew the whole house was getting hit, he didn't have time to even hide in the bathroom. Zero warning. I heard that from a lot of survivors.

@carolgold-boyd9287

2 жыл бұрын

@@lesleylesley5821 They really do sound like freight trains. But much louder.

@grayrabbit2211

2 жыл бұрын

You forgot the part about stocking up on booze! Can't have a hurricane party without booze.

@rosekay5031

2 жыл бұрын

That’s why I find tornadoes so scary: little to no warning, you can’t always see one, if you can see one you can’t always tell which way it’s going, they look so small in comparison to other storm events, they “twist” through the landscape. So unsettling.

My biggest issue is the factories were given a 10 hour warning about the possibility of a large tornado, yet employees of the candle factory said they were told if they left they would be fired. If this is true, then that factory owners are POS, and I hope they get sued out of existence.

@FeScully

2 жыл бұрын

Omg. Sometime you just can’t believe the things people are capable of doing….

@defies4626

2 жыл бұрын

They won't be held to account because capitalism inherently incentivizes this utterly vile behavior. The whole system has to be ripped out in order to make a more equitable existence that doesn't create these perverse incentives.

@Stretch501st

2 жыл бұрын

@@defies4626 I would respectfully disagree that it is a result of any economic or political ideology. If anything, centrally planned economies suffer from even more corruption and criminal behavior, such as in the Soviet Union and events like Chernobyl. In capitalism, I think there is an advantage too in that businesses can be held accountable outside of politic will and mechanisms, such as through voting with your wallet, filing lawsuits in civil courts, unionizing, strikes, etc.

@Stretch501st

2 жыл бұрын

@@defies4626 I think great progress would happen in this country and the world with the removal or cronyism or corporate socialism as some call it, to encourage more competition and give workers, and consumers more voice than politicians.

@defies4626

2 жыл бұрын

@@Stretch501st 'cronyism' is capitalism working as intended. The. Whole. System. MUST. GO.

Regarding saferooms. I work in a industrial park where planning for it started during ww2 and there are bombshelters in the basement. The signs are still up and the door works :)

@VictorNewman201

2 жыл бұрын

A very different kind of country and civic culture built those shelters. The idea of trying to protect everyone seemed natural and essential, it wasn't some sort of cost / benefit analysis.

@jaysmith1408

2 жыл бұрын

Library in my old city had the fallout shelter.

For anybody who's never been through a tornado, I can tell you that they're terrifying. Last year just before the lockdowns started, a tornado came within about a half mile from my house. I was standing in my doorway with the whole family in the house behind me trying to figure what I should do. We don't have a basement, but my neighbor across the street does and I have the keys. I looked off in the distance and saw lights going out and flashes as the power lines and transformers were being blown down. I don't know if the sound or the pressure change of the air is scarier. I'm not ashamed to say that how I scared I was, but the tornado didn't come my way. I heard it pass and the sound got quieter instead of louder. Relieved isn't a strong enough word for how I felt when the tornado went another way, but then the guilt came because I knew people down the line weren't going to be as lucky as me and my family had been. All of this happened in about a minute or just over a minute. And this was 'just' an EF3 tornado with winds around 160mph (257 km/h).

@grayrabbit2211

2 жыл бұрын

Tornadoes are quite common in Florida. We actually get more of them than any other state in the USA. However, most of them are weak. Unless you're living in a trailer, they're not going to do any real damage. Now, the tornadoes Florida gets in the winter are rare, but are the real deal like the midwest gets. I've been through 4 tornadoes in my life. (lucky me) Two in a single-family house, one in a mid-rise concrete condo, and one in my car. All EF0 at the time they were at my location. One turned into an EF1/EF2 later in its life. Scary? Yes. Frightening? Not really. The worst was one which hit the single family house at night. Unexpected. Weather warnings weren't much in the 1980s. Some minor roof damage and we don't know where the fence went. The others were all daytime tornadoes, which weren't so scary. The one which hit the mid-rise condo was pretty much a non-event. Thunderstorm with some decent lighting. My rabbit usually liked thunderstorms and would run to the window to watch them. He was doing that then suddenly made a mad dash for underneath the bed. He started thumping his rear legs on the floor to warn us. Winds picked up, palm trees started to bend, some branches got ripped off, but we felt completely safe. Didn't even try hiding from it.

I've live in Oklahoma city since the 1980's and have seen the extreme devastation tornadoes do. I've seen Moore Oklahoma get hit twice in little over ten years. I also work in a large warehouse. Keep in mind warehouses are very large and have a lot of equipment and product that can become deadly very quickly. Also, keep in mind warehouses have very few interior areas that are not open. Many of the casinos have tornado shelters. Some, not all restrooms, are designated as shelters. There is really no reason, a warehouse can't have restrooms and offices that serve as tornado shelters. What we need to keep in mind about tornados, unlike hurricanes can happen during at any time in severe weather, with little or no warning.

@TheMattTrakker

Жыл бұрын

Did you watch the video?

It’s not just a matter of whether it makes economic sense to spend money on reducing fatalities. It’s also a matter of whether that money could be better spent on other measures. So $100 billion in tornado hardening might prevent 25 deaths a year across the country. But if you instead spent that $100 billion on road safety, you might save 25000 deaths a year.

@rickansell661

2 жыл бұрын

Very much agree. It is not a 'Cost of investment' issue, it is a 'Balance of investment' issue.

@ziggarillo

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely and road deaths are a measure of the risk a society will tolerate. Oddly though we seem to have a very high tolerance of that particular risk compared to others.

@ttrev007

2 жыл бұрын

That is a very good point.

@MrHBSoftware

2 жыл бұрын

@@ziggarillo in the event of a tornado or natural disaster you are basically helpless ...if you drive carefully and safely the chance of injury by accident is minimal and you have some control over the situation if you apply driving techniques...most accidents and deaths are caused by alcohol drugs speeding and stupidity. drivers come out of the driving school without any notion of dymamic driving and avoiding accidents, its basically close their eyes and slam the brakes then pray....obviously a drunk driver speeding can kill an innocent one but the vast majority could be avoided by simply being carefull...its the same debate as flying a plane versus driving a car...a plane is safer statistically but i feel way safer when driving...basically a malfunction on the car will not automatically kill me in a brutal way like on a plane or helicopter and i am also not dependant on a pilot's skill....it may be more dangerous to drive but i feel that if i am carefull, skillfull and defensive i am safe...and i have a LOT of miles driven, a LOT....

@whazzat8015

2 жыл бұрын

@@MrHBSoftware A LOT is not statistically significant. This is decision by chagrin , not statistics. The plural of anecdote is not data.

When I began my training as an economist, one of the first principles impressed on me was that you don't find out what choices people will make by asking them, you have to observe them making the choices. Surveying them to find out what they are willing to pay to avoid a statistical event is pretty much useless. Another principle is that they make choices between a chance of being killed or injured, and a certain amount of money, every day. We know, for example, how much they are willing to pay for tires with better traction, how much for stronger dead bolts, what discount will induce them to accept out-dated canned food. People make conflicting statements about their preferences, but are generally consistent in what they demand for the money they actually shell out. A third valuable principle is that probabilities are only reliably estimated from experience. People tend to estimate probabilities relevant to them from their experience, or more exactly what they think they remember. The result is, when it comes not to the likelihood of a tornado occurring, for example, but to how bad it will be if it does occur, the average person reaches back for a remembered lifetime. The worst that can be expected to happen is equivalent to the worst that has happened in the last generation, about 20-25 years. If something hasn't happened in the last 50 years, it will not happen again. Problems arise when people try to account for the experiences of other people, experiences they perhaps don't really understand. What the government and the mass media say is experience may influence decisions unduly because the experience is inappropriately applied. The recent Covid-19 panicdemic illustrates the point. In my estimation, the variation in risk according to location was inadequately appreciated, with the result that inadequate precautions were taken in some places, while unnecessarily Draconian measures were instituted in others. Having myself made a rough-and-ready estimate of the VSL in the United States, I find the ten million dollar figure broadly accurate. The "true" figure may be a few million more or less, but ten million is a pretty good number given the difficulties of the data.

@mendelde

2 жыл бұрын

A lot depends on how questions are framed. "Would you you spend $100 to lower your chance of death by 0.001%" gets a different response as "We're going to randomly kill 1 out of 100,000 people. Would you pay $100 for the assurance that's not going to be you?"

@louisc.gasper7588

2 жыл бұрын

@@mendelde However carefully the questions are phrased, it's still better to observe behavior.

@lwilton

2 жыл бұрын

@T.J. Kong My boss once described the upper-level managers of the company: "These are very busy people. There is only ONE THING that they want to think about. And that is ONE THING. Not TWO THINGS, or THREE THINGS. They want to think about just ONE thing. That is why they are going to close the plant. Because there is another plant that they want to think about, not ours."

@Rx7man

2 жыл бұрын

@@mendelde Another question is affordability.. Would you pay $10 to not have this event happen to you in the next month? Well, I can afford $10, so yes... Now if you rephase the question to not having that event happen to you in the next century for $12,000, the cost per month is the same, but not everyone could pull out $12K to spare, so their answer will change to "no"

@mendelde

2 жыл бұрын

@@Rx7man Well, that opportunity basically only comes up when you're building a (ware)house, so it's not that much money in comparison; but greed still wants to save that money, so we need regulations.

I definitely enjoy your quick coverage of this event and how it effects engineering and building and the related ethics/social issues. This helps me and others hopefully understand how important it is too learn about our buildings and improving our future through ethical design.

One thing that’s hard to explain in words but easy to show in a drawing is how tornado damage can happen. Since tornados are spinning and also moving in a specific direction. If the tornado is moving at 50mph with 100mph wind speeds and spinning counter clockwise. The right side of the tornado will have the the wind speed plus the directional speed added up. So it will have 150mph wind speed. But on the left side since the air is wrapping around it subtracts the direction speed from the wind speed so the left side only sees 50mph winds. That’s why one side of a street can get demolished and the other side just gets a strong wind.

@AreeyaKKC

2 жыл бұрын

Inflow winds need to be accounted too. El Reno Tornado had air being sucked into the Strom at 90 mph

@andrewk8636

2 жыл бұрын

I wonder how torsional forces play into it too

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but a tornado hitting one spot once doesn't change the chance of the same spot being hit again. We think a specific event happening once makes it less likely of it happening again, but that's a fallacy.

@jaychip1

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, you are right. But there is a different chance of a tornado hitting a specific spot vs a hurricane hitting a specific spot. Your chance that does not change (you are right) is the chance you use for the cost/benifit calculation. The term, "return" is confusing here, it would be less confusing to just use chance per year, or whatever time period you want.

@Bonkesh

2 жыл бұрын

@@jaychip1 Thanks for explaining!

@mg30ebay

2 жыл бұрын

In fact, one might hypothesize that a spot is more likely to be hit again due to things like its landscape features. Lightning often strikes the same place twice for that reason.

@user-sm3xq5ob5d

2 жыл бұрын

The concept has nothing to do with a specific spot and it being hit. It is about the amount of damage that causes loss. It does not matter if the same house is destroyed twice during a hundred years time period or if there are two houses miles away being damaged during the same period. The cost is the same. What is looked at is the number of hits per period multiplied by the amount of damage cause by one hit. That is the total damage. You arrive at the likelihood of a hit by counting the hits over the time period. Regardless where the hits stroke.

The sad thing is that many well built structures have been demolished because of real estate bubbles. Large metal structures are cheap to build but inherently unsafe in high strength storms. Wood frame structures are garbage but used extensively for residential structures. Reinforced concrete low rise buildings are the most tornado resistant. I remember in the 1980's here in south Florida very poor quality higher density developments like country walk and Hampshire homes were constructed where older low density rural areas were and hurricane Andrew flattened them. Once they are built and sold the profits are made. besides catastrophic events regular weathering caused severe damage over time in rot and termites without constant attention. .

@NareshKumar-mz5nr

2 жыл бұрын

I am from India and I haven't been able to understand the concept with American houses especially in southern areas where the temperature is warmer. Why not build houses with hollow blocks and concrete. Because despite being a lower income country most of the pucca houses built here are built with concrete walls and ceiling. Even the slighly cheaper ones have solid walls, only the roof might be of tiles.

@defies4626

2 жыл бұрын

@@NareshKumar-mz5nr Money. Capitalism consuming human life.

@mjinba07

2 жыл бұрын

I live in an area that gets tornadoes periodically, and in the last couple of decades I've seen an sizeable increase in the number of homes built on foundational pads without basements. They're cheaper. But, I think, stupider, for a variety of reasons. Supposedly some have a reinforced "safe room" in a center location but I haven't seen any that took a direct hit. The likelihood of a direct hit may be small but, of course, the consequence is catastrophic.

@mikewithers299

2 жыл бұрын

@@NareshKumar-mz5nr you are correct in saying there should be more concrete block homes in hurricane prone areas. I live close to Country Walk area and saw the devestation after hurricane Andrew. Those homes in that area are mostly wood framed structures. Most of this area is normally concrete block structures, and even poured concrete. Building codes have changed drastically now to not build those kinds of structures anymore.

@grayrabbit2211

2 жыл бұрын

@@NareshKumar-mz5nr I would say most homes in Florida are built out of concrete blocks. For some reason the cheap builders will make any floors above the ground floor out of wood, while the mid-range ones will continue to use concrete blocks. Dead tree carcasses have no place in a Florida building.

Excellent as always. Most people have no idea of the decision tree that occurs with any undertaking.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching Mike!

This video is a good balance between current events and the engineering and regulations behind them. It’s really important that people understand what type of cost/benefit analysis gets completed when looking at managing risk and having a clean explanation of how society approaches this problem is really useful.

As a registered technical professional often involved in forensic work, I very much enjoy and appreciate your honesty, technical knowledge, and ability to fairly present so many issues in a straightforward, honest, even handed way. Thank you!

Thanks for doing this. I lived on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for 25 years and have seen first hand the destruction and as someone that's done everything from framing new houses to working for an electrician to wire those new houses but more importantly was bringing older house up to current standards. This allowed me to see the progression in building codes and see the difference in damage from storms. At least hurricanes give plenty of time to prepare unlike tornadoes where you may get a warning the day before but by the time one forms you have minutes if not seconds. I'll stick with hurricanes for the advanced warning and the great job they do "flushing the toilet" so to speak.

There was a warehouse manager/facility on one of those “I survived”/“storm stories” shows who built a shelter for his employees after experiencing a tornado himself. A few years later a tornado hit the facility and everyone survived because the bathrooms were reinforced to storm code

Thanks for the calm and objective presentation! I am so tired of seeing certain other channels running on emotion shrieking "there outta be a law..." and "if it saves just one life...." without a single thought of costs or other implications. Your presentation is a refreshing change from the hysteria.

I have so much respect for the balanced level-headed explanation in this video! So many people question the outcome of tragic events with 20/20 hindsight, but they often don't sit down and consider the practical implications of whether the expenditure to reduce risk would have made sense in advance. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For example, we could eliminate virtually all road accidents deaths in a few years if we spent unlimited amounts of money to do so. Are we going to do that? No. That isn't a lack of compassion... it's just that the cost of doing so would simply be too prohibitive for society to support that amount of investment. That isn't callous... it's just a reality of allocating finite economic resources.

@LuvBorderCollies

2 жыл бұрын

People will not even pay what it costs to have a rust-proof car. That's been talked about for decades. Cost per vehicle is way beyond what anyone is willing to pay.

I live in Hattiesburg,MS and in the last 20 years we have been directly hit by Katrina and about 8 other storms of varying strength as well as 2 tornadoes in 2013 and 2017. Plus many many other tornadoes in a 40 mile circle. I’ve always wondered why there aren’t mandated laws for building shelters in homes and businesses. We have a few community shelters but they are not close when a storm is bearing down on you. It just seems like if they were mandated then there might be more programs to help the people who can’t afford them thus saving lives. I’m glad you covered this topic.

@user-sm3xq5ob5d

2 жыл бұрын

May I ask what you have done for your personal safety? As in amount of dollars and protective measures. I just wonder why people call for the government to tell them what to do instead of acting yourself.

Nothing can protect 100% of the people 100% of the time over 100% of the country (or world). These natural disasters have high “perceived risk” because they are outside of our daily experience. But the greatest real risk to our safety is using motorized transport, from driving cars to being passengers on other transit. We also have the illusion having more control over the risk of driving than we actually do. There are many less frightening things that cause much more mortality, like accidents at home.

@gergelyvarju6679

2 жыл бұрын

And sadly most American towns aren't designed to be safe...

@lwilton

2 жыл бұрын

@@gergelyvarju6679 "Safe" used in that way is a meaningless propaganda word. "Safe" for what? Or who? Or "safe" against what? Crime? Floods? Volcanos? Terrorist attacks? Excessive taxes? Excessive regulations? Warrantless arrests in the middle of the night? Traffic deaths? Old age?

@ThunderClawShocktrix

4 ай бұрын

yes the reallty is spending the same amount of money that would go into making all warehouses 'tornado safe' could save far more lives by teaching people how to drive defensively and fixing unsafe road junctions

My dream as a kid was to be an engineer. The dream was forgotten for lack of direction. I was a poor kid with no guidance. Fast forward to now and I’m a professor at a College for Human Resources. I teach about occupational work safety and risk management for employers. This topic brings out the best of the two worlds I love and thanks you so much for merging the conversation and in a logical manner. I’m going to bring this up during lecture.

Always well researched and extremely informative. Thank you for your hard work.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Much appreciated!

Also of note is that "tornado alley" seems to be moving a bit to the east from the plains states more to the Mississippi Valley and points east. Unfortunately, a lot of these states have insufficient building codes and it is doubtful that many buildings, regardless of building codes could stand up to a tornado of that magnitude.

@mikefochtman7164

2 жыл бұрын

I moved to Chattanooga TN in 2010. When I asked about tornado's I was told, "Oh we don't get them this far east. Haven't seen anything like that in years." Sure enough, 2011 we had tornado's north of the city and another just south in Georgia. Go figure.

@LTVoyager

2 жыл бұрын

I am not aware of any building codes anywhere in the US that will provide structures that will withstand a direct hit by most tornadoes. The cost of making a tornado-proof structure would be breath taking.

@Rx7man

2 жыл бұрын

@@LTVoyager yup, best you can do is provide some resistant spaces... and in the case of Amazon, allow people to seek shelter without the threat of being fired

@professorneturman2249

2 жыл бұрын

@@LTVoyager Coastal Florida has the Miami-Dade or equivalent. My area is a Cat 5 high wind zone of 180 mph. We bunker build for Cat 5 and storm surge

@LTVoyager

2 жыл бұрын

@@professorneturman2249 Cat 5 hurricanes are only F3 on the tornado scale, which is a fairly moderator tornado. Tornadoes routinely exceed 180 MPH and 300 MPH isn’t out of the question. Building to withstand an F5 tornado (up to 318 MPH wind speed) is certainly possible, but would be exceedingly expensive.

You may want to look at Moore, OK about the concept of an abnormal example that disrupts the concept of not being hit often. The same parts of the town has been impacted multiple times by significant tornadoes in the last 30 years. It’s gotta be a code and insurance nightmare.

@roguedalek900

2 жыл бұрын

Be mindful too Moore OK is in the middle of tornado alley. The statistical odds increase in a given location.

@SIGINT007

2 жыл бұрын

@@roguedalek900 so are every other town, but they don’t get continuously destroyed every few years like Moore does.

@sjholmesbrown

2 жыл бұрын

@@SIGINT007 That's quite interesting, there must be some aspect of the surrounding geography that tends to 'funnel' storms or the tornadoes they spawn down that path.

@timdouglass9831

2 жыл бұрын

And there's the big question. Is Moore actually more likely to be hit or did the coin just land on heads 10 times in a row?

Given NWS can now provide warning of tornado almost with 100% certainty, the first priority should go to warning the public in real-time at all times of day and night. Amazon warehouse was a new build and safe room (?) failed, hopefully OSHA report will shed light on why room failed to protect the workers and establish if room was built to code. Candle factory appears to be a case where a low density occupancy warehouse / factory building was converted to high density occupancy. Seems like fire code would have required a review / inspection and building modifications made re exits, fire alarms, safe rooms, etc. Hopefully KY building code provides for safe rooms in schools, auditoriums and similar high occupancy locations.

@innagottadavida8538

2 жыл бұрын

I work in a warehouse and we have annual tornado drills where we all go stand in the bathrooms. They're currently remodeling those bathrooms and I can say with certainty that they wouldn't likely hold up against a tornado. The bathrooms are made from just studs and drywall.

@innagottadavida8538

2 жыл бұрын

I work in a warehouse and we have annual tornado drills where we all go stand in the bathrooms. They're currently remodeling those bathrooms and I can say with certainty that they wouldn't likely hold up against a tornado. The bathrooms are made from just studs and drywall.

When you look at a big box store like a Walmart, a factory like Amazon, or even a School the only way to make them 100% tornado proof would to build everything underground. The next best thing would build a safe zone in these buildings but than you still have to figure out how to get everyone into a safe zone when you usually have little or no warning time before the tornado strikes. In a tornado you have a greater risk from flying debris over having a wall or ceiling collapsing on someone.

It is far easier to predict stream & river flooding than tornados: the water courses are geographically fixed. When buying a property near a stream the main question is where is the "100 year" flood zone (1%annual probability), etc. I've lived in the Delaware valley for decades and can recall only 3 or 4 tornados that hit within a few miles. (The last was a couple months ago.) These delivered nothing like the total devastation seen in "tornado alley" - mostly damage to roofs, some siding & "topping" & felling of trees.

You explained the view from society pretty well. I am reminded of CTS where the people in the HOA apparently refused to spend some millions. Which in retrospect would likely have saved their lives. Putting the number you mentioned (10m/life) to it they could have spent 1billion dollars to come even. And it was only a few tens of millions that made the difference between life and death for them. Many living there may not have been able to afford that sum they were to contribute. But does that also mean they could not afford to live? Strange questions come up. And another thought. People become very stingy if they are asked to contribute to the common good. Which is e.g. when they are asked to pay for house insurance. But when it comes to their personal well-being they are willing to overspend. Like buying a fancy car or even a house instead of riding a bike or rent a hut. just the difference between feeling it every day (the car) and perceiving a faint likelihood of things happening to them. Now a question to all Floridians: Do you have insurance against holes? The big ones that open up under your property!

I am a subscriber to your channel, and somehow didn't expect to see this topic covered, though I shouldn't have been! You have the ability to convey complex and competing narratives in a clear and coherent way, without sensationalism (in either direction). P.S. I have long had interest in severe weather, and in actuarial statistics, so this makes a lot of sense to me.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Wow, thank you Gordon! That means a lot.

@Lawofimprobability

2 жыл бұрын

Economists have similar calculations such as the anticipated drop in overall death rates correlated with economic growth rates.

@Hello-rl6lp

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed...I love his content!

Really love your thorough explanations and I always learn alot. Love the channel. My experience, living in Missouri, Tornadoes like to hop. Not always a clear path. Ex: it'll take your home, all of it, all the way to the foundation, and leave ALL the ones around it Perfect. Then a 1/2 mile down the road it'll take half a town. & the REALLY scary part is that it happens in a matter of minutes or even seconds. Luckily most of the time you have a few more minutes. there is a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure like when you're on a plane and of course the sound of a freight train & the ground shakes like in an earthquake. Hurricanes you have days or hours to prepare & I think alot of the damage is flooding. Most of the time taking out alot of the state. The insurance company in tornado alley could give discounts to homeowners/businesses if they were to have a tornado shelter. Might help? Having a tornado drop on you out of nowhere is the scariest thing ever.

@LuvBorderCollies

2 жыл бұрын

The insurance companies are cost/benefit/balance driven. Most of their costs come from structural damage, not deaths.

Anytime a tornado hits and people read a news story about it, the comments are flooded with people suggesting that buildings (including single family homes) be required to have shelters installed. What I don't think these people understand is that a great deal of tornado country is also a part of the country that isn't exactly swimming in economic affluence. Wages and standards of living are much, much lower than in urban or coastal areas. This has a great effect on property values, tax revenue and what the populace can reasonably spend on amenities both public and private. Yes, these shelters can save lives but even in the most tornado ridden spot on earth, there's a better than 99% chance that they'll never have to be put to such a test. Much like any other natural hazard, it is a risk we choose to live with.

CBA is always important, but we aren't talking about hardening an urban highrise against a meteorite strike. All that it takes to save lives is a simple basement or a metal box tethered to a concrete slab. There's really no excuse to avoid these measures in some form in a tornado zone except poverty.

I lived in Bridgecreek, Oklahoma, when the May 3, 1999, tornado hit. It dug up grass in a path 1 mile wide and was rated as at LEAST an F5. One person recently told me the scale has changed and the May 3rd tornado was upgraded to an F6, but I don't know first hand whether or not that's true. At any rate, I just want to voice my support and agreement with what you said about it not being possible, at least not financially feasible, to construct an entire building, or even a home, that is "Tornado Proof". That evening, as the tornado was barrelling toward Bridgecreek from Chickasha, local meteorologist Gary England became emotional for the first time I can ever remember. He was terrified of what he knew was going to happen. I will never forget his voice over the radio, warning people and pleading with people, "I can not stress this enough, folks! You WILL NOT SURVIVE ABOVE GROUND!"

This reminds me why kids are taught the story of "The 3 Little Pigs". The straw building made of straw was blown down, the building made of sticks was eventually brought down, and the building of bricks stood. A very simple explanation, but very effective in kids remembering it. You'd think they'd have an underground storm shelter for workplaces. Dig a hole in the ground, rebar, concrete and add a door. It doesn't cost a lot and it would save lives. There are also prefab plastics that can be buried, all buy the door. If you're in the path of a tornado, chances are, you're going to lose the roof, if not the entire structure. 300mph winds are no joke. Excellent subject! I was talking with someone about this very thing just last night. It would be awesome if you could cover different types of structures and roof types. What survives, what doesn't. What's the best structure in a tornado? Thanks! Merry Christmas!

one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic. This is a very blunt and honest discussion of a topic that at the moment has a huge emotional charge.

Very well explained. Not saying there shouldn't be changes to the way we build in tornado prone areas, but buildings have to be economical or nobody will build them in the first place. If the warehouse made to store plastic toys and clothing is built to the specs of a reactor containment building, yes nobody would get hurt *if* it gets hit by a tornado, but nobody would be employed there either because the company that built such a facility would go bankrupt before it was finished. There has to be a balance between safety and practicality. A car that gets great gas mileage and is impervious to crashes would likely be slower than walking.

We had a series of tornadoes blow through Iowa this evening, and it’s stunning how many people don’t understand the unpredictability of tornadoes. Thank you for explaining them! Setting aside the details about feasibility and nuances involved, there is no doubt many lives would have been saved if there was some sort of underground shelter in Amazon’s building.

@davidb6576

2 жыл бұрын

Underground does not necessarily help, it's subject to the same drop in air pressure by the passage of a tornado as a surface building. It's the design and construction that matters - extra bracing, thicker/stronger materials, better "tie downs" or anchoring to the ground, etc. Even having strategic vents to account for the rapid drop in barometric pressure when a tornado is overhead can matter, but at some cost to humans (we're not built for a sudden drop in pressure either).

@kathym8234

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidb6576 I thought of your reply here as information from Saturday’s tornadoes in IA becomes available. With the exception of the one death in a state park, only three residential dwellings were involved and near each other. One was a mobile home, and the other two didn’t have basements. Video/images available show a flattened home with a partial basement. The owners survived, but it is unknown if they were at home at the time. I agree with you that basements are not 100% safe. A couple of deaths from a 2008 EF5 in Parkersburg, IA were from people being sucked out of their basements. With the erratic nature of tornadoes-forecasters predicted tornadoes on Saturday, but were blindsided by the strength-is there even a possible solution for 100% storm-proof shelters?

@davidb6576

2 жыл бұрын

@@kathym8234 Yes, a ground or underground shelter can be made from correctly designed and anchored reinforced concrete or other materials, but at some significant cost. Which takes us back to the premise of the video...

Another way of thinking about this: You have only so much money you can spend on saving lives. Money is a finite resource. Where can we spend it to save the most lives? Would the money be better spent on automatic breaking in cars? Would be it be better spent developing an artificial pancreas? What has the most return for the resources spend?

5:20 not always. El Reno tornado was 2.4 miles wide with 302mph wind speeds. The fastest wind speeds ever recorded. Also Joplin Missouri got hammered hard in that tornado.

@TofuInc

2 жыл бұрын

The Joplin tornado was unlike anything I've ever seen. Driving through the center of the city and the town had been wiped down to the dirt with nothing left except stumps. I'll never forget that.

@LTVoyager

2 жыл бұрын

Even 2.4 miles wide is a scalpel compared to hurricanes which can be 200 miles wide. And very few tornadoes are even close to 2.4 miles wide for any length of time.

@LuvBorderCollies

2 жыл бұрын

@@LTVoyager Even a 1 mile wide tornado is an exceptionally huge twister.

@sbclaridge

2 жыл бұрын

@@LTVoyager If we are particularly talking about hurricane winds, however, the strongest winds occur within the eyewall, which is a fairly small part of the entire hurricane. The eye itself tends to be 20-40 miles wide, with the eyewall surrounding that; eyewalls are typicalls about 10 miles wide. Using these average figures, the area affected by the eyewall winds of a hypothetical landfalling hurricane (moving towards the coast at a 90-degree angle) would be between 30 and 50 miles wide. The area affected by an eyewall is considerably larger than that of the largest tornadoes. There have been situations where hurricanes move parallel to the coast, such as Hurricane Matthew in 2016. The eyewall fortunately remained off of central Florida's Atlantic coast, but as I recall, it came very close to scraping the shoreline. If this happened, Matthew's eyewall could have affected a large swath of the coast in a region where the most densely populated areas are right along the immediate coast.

Interesting topic. Love your videos. Now you are discussing something I know lots about! Fact: Hurricane Ida packed sustained winds over 150mph & possibly over 175mph. Where I live, which is on the edge of New Orleans, we had sustained winds between 130 & 145 mph for hours & hours. Tornadic wind speeds are typically about 145 to over 200 mph for a very narrow pathway for a very limited burst of time. Ida was extreme, amazing to watch first hand, & would be very difficult to build a structure that would reliably & safely survive intact while being cost effective & reasonably priced. Isn't that what it comes down to...cost vs safety?

@Kandralla

2 жыл бұрын

More than that... Opportunity cost VS safety. If you spend $2 million building a bunker to protect from the tiny chance that a tornado hits the building that's 2million that can't be spent on better fire suppression prevention equipment, or better PPE, or providing healthy food for free in the cafeteria, or better medical insurance so that the employees are more likely to take better care of themselves. It not just about the wrote costs... It's also about what doesn't get done. I'd be willing to bet that none of the people who goes and spends money building a tornado shelter would even consider getting fire suppression sprinklers installed in their home. Yet more people are killed by housefires each year (about 2500) than by 20 years worth of tornados (about 1500)

Thank you for bringing this discussion up! Perhaps facilities like the Amazon fulfilment center could utilize multiple "safe rooms" located throughout the building?

@tiffanysandmeier4753

2 жыл бұрын

They aren't really called "safe rooms." They are storm shelters. I work in a recently built building in Nebraska. The bathrooms on the first floor were built with masonry walls (8" concrete blocks) as a shelter.

@tiffanysandmeier4753

2 жыл бұрын

Though maybe safe room vs storm shelter is a regional thing or a storm shelter is a type of safe room. I don't know.

As a retired mechanical engineer who designed pressure vessels, I truly enjoy your analysis of effect of engineering on daily life. Keep it up!

The majority of tornadoes are not EF-4 or EF-5, but smaller tornadoes and even wind cost too much damage that can be prevented for fairly low costs. Yet for pennies on the dollar of new construction this is resisted by builders but probably is near zero cost over the life of a structure. That makes me upset because insurance knows it can just recover the losses through higher premiums so they have no incentive to force builders to build better. Building a home to withstand an EF-1 tornado just might save a life in a higher rated storm. For example just strapping the roof to the frame of a new construction on home is dirt cheap but builders refuse to do so. Also building a safer room/closet in a new home construction is dirt cheap as well. It doesn't take much cost to frame one interior closet with bracing or even cover it in thin plywood or thicker sheet rock. If construction for a factory or office building putting up a interior reinforced concrete wall is not that cost prohibitive.

This is a good analysis. It's a hard subject, putting a price on a life. I do think that there should be a law that at X number of employees you need at least a basement or something everyone can huddle in when a tornado is spotted near the vicinity. Tornados are so random and devastate at a pin point, but I think it's a precaution that should be followed. I'm in California so I can't say how many people have basements/cellars in general in the mid-west, but based on the movie twister or a few other ones, I would think they are common. I don't know if it would be enough protection but I imagine it's a bit safer, right?

@BiosElement

2 жыл бұрын

This echo's my thought. If you have over x number of employees on-site, then it should be mandatory to have some form of hard 'anchored' shelter. This could also be beneficial for other forms of danger such as active shooter incidents as well. Coming from Ohio, the majority of homes have basements, partially due to tornado's.

for tornados, the other factor is expected warning time, and maximum distance from where a person might be in a factory to the nearest shelter. The news mentioned people who wanted to go home, which is probably a dangerous thing to do during a tornado

@sunspot42

2 жыл бұрын

That depends on how far away the tornado is. My understanding is there was ample time between the warning and the arrival of the tornado. People could have shelters at home or have a place to shelter elsewhere in case of tornadoes.

Lived all my 37 years in middle Tennessee, had 3 near misses and 1 close shave with the weather here. #1 2003 Straight line wind event when, only time I went down into the basement/garage part of the house. If the wind had been blowing the other way, it would have blown two trees right thru our kitchen roof/window. Scared as hell but knew we had a good undergroundish spot to hide #2 2009 Murfreesboro tornado, lived in an apartment right on the Stones River Greenway, tornado crossed about 1/8th of a mile west of the apartment. Wasn't home at the time but it blew a bunch of trees down in our parking lot crushing a few cars, ripped shingles/gutters off the buildings, the one building closest to the tornado was deemed unihabitable because it lifted the roof trusses up and off, then set them back down and caused a bunch of structural damage. They eventually fixed it(whole top roof structure came off) but there were 4 families that had to move out of their townhouses. #3 2010 Nashville flood, lived in a duplex with a basement garage, I dunno how my car wasn't flooded, there was a good inch or two of water in that basement that drained out under the garage door into a storm drain at the bottom of the driveway. #4 2020 Nashville tornado, I was about a mile away but saw/watched/heard that damn thing from my front porch. It was crazy how calm the winds were near my house. Electric transformers blowing up sounding like artillery fire.

@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823

2 жыл бұрын

I don't know that I'd still be there. Where I live, assuming you're smart enough to stay home when warned of bad weather...I mean snow is generally unlikely to kill you. Heat is about twice as likely.

How much does a storm cellar (or several) cost? How much does it cost to suspend operations during a tornado warning?

@SadisticSenpai61

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly. Given how often we get tornado warnings and have to take shelter, every building has to have a tornado plan in place to begin with as well as a designated shelter location. The idea that the shelter location doesn't have to meet any kind of building code is absolutely insane. I believe OK has the stricted tornado shelter requirements, but they also get the most tornadoes every year - including tornadoes that take the same paths through town (see Moore, OK). I'm in Iowa and we're currently preparing for yet another huge storm where high winds and tornadoes are expected. It could very well turn out to be another derecho. Just about everyone is making plans to spend the early evening in their basements, if they have them.

@bishwatntl

2 жыл бұрын

Suspending operations is usually balanced against people getting caught on a highway trying to run away. I have personal experience of trying to walk between two locations during a storm and realising that I was more in danger from falling billboards or flying scaffolding than from damage to a building I could (should) have been inside.

@mendelde

2 жыл бұрын

@@bishwatntl the idea is to suspend operations and send everyone to the storm cellar or other safe location when danger draws near.

@ziggarillo

2 жыл бұрын

The problem in tornado areas is you cannot predict the path, so you would shut down a whole state 100 time a year ( using his Illinois stats) to prevent a very small number of deaths (11 over 5 years) whilst people are dying in road traffic accidents in excess of that every week.

@SadisticSenpai61

2 жыл бұрын

@@ziggarillo There's a pretty big difference from having a sturdy shelter for ppl to duck into at public buildings (of which a workplace is one - no one lives there) and "shutting down the state"

Every building in tornado alley should be required to have a tornado shelter, including houses. They don't have to be that expensive either. I live in southern Indiana and have seen the catastrophic damage up close. Way too close. A mobile home park nearby had 23 deaths from an F3 tornado. I cringe watching large multi-hundred home neighborhoods being built without a basement or shelter to think of. I've seen a mobile home frame twisted into a figure 8 and thrown 1/2 a mile over a hill. You won't find me living in a house without a shelter. Also, a basement alone really isn't enough. You need something in that basement to protect you from debris from above. A neighbor survived being picked up by an F-3 tornado. All of his household appliances fell straight down into the basement, and it also flooded. You've got to be prepared correctly!

Thank you! I live in Tornado Alley and have always wanted to know about this.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Glad it was helpful!

This video was fantastic, I knew absolutely nothing about this topic coming in and I now feel really educated on it. This is not the type of content I normally watch on KZread but the title really drew me in and I was not disappointed. Great work!

Question I have is the Amazon building didn't take a direct hit . Yet , winds and negative vacuum pressure was enough to make their concrete prefab wall to collapse inward crushing people. It looks like the roof beams were the only structural element used to keep the walls upright and verticle .

I think building codes in Florida have gotten out of hand and are unreasonable. What should we expect from a structure? If you look at NFPA, the structure's purpose is to protect the occupants long enough to get to safety. The building may eventually burn to the ground or collapse, but not before occupants can get to safety. Florida's hurricane building codes are designed to prevent the structure from incurring any damage, which is crazy. Certainly we don't want to see houses collapsing with people in them during a hurricane, but the mantra of no damage at all may be causing more harm than good. One of my condos is 52 years old. It's been through multiple hurricanes over the years, no damage. We recently had to replace the then 50-year-old windows as the frames had failed and were allowing water to enter the walls. The replacement windows are required to be "hurricane code" windows to the tune of $20k. Non-hurricane-code windows would have been $5k. I'm not seeing $15k of value here. That's money that could have gone towards shutters, 3M window film, etc. Building codes are supposed to be the bare minimum, not best practices. Now, talking about tornadoes... I've never understood why places out in the Midwest don't have some form of shelter. Doesn't needed to be bomb-proof; rather just good enough to keep someone from dying. CBS w/rebar back-filled with concrete should work fine and be cheap enough for anyone to afford yet good enough to get people through most storms. Even just one room in a structure could work. Much like a life raft for a cruise ship. It just needs to get you to safety. Nothing more. In large buildings, reinforced bathrooms would work well enough. They're usually well spaced-out around the facility, window-less, and usually have open space (no desks or boxes to get in the way).

Allowing the workers to go home when the tornado sirens went off seems like it would have been a good idea. The candle factory and Amazon warehouse likely didn’t have basements, but many of their workers probably did. Spreading out in a tornado makes sense since it’s so scalpel like.

@mendelde

2 жыл бұрын

Statistically speaking, there's no difference. But protecting a group in place makes sense because of economics of scale: 1 tornado shelter protecting 50 is cheaper than 25 tornado shelters protecting 2 people. Also, you typically don't have enough time to go far, sometimes only minutes.

Great way to combine construction and engineering with current events and news. Well done.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you Mark!

Great explanation of how codes are developed, thanks. You expanded my perspective. The Amazon facility appeared to be reinforced concrete tilt up construction, I'd love your general analysis of this type and it's wind resistance characteristics. I'm amazed some walls were destroyed.

2017, 59 tornadoes, 1 death. : What if most facilities already include a safe shelter, and that 1 death came from a facility that didn't because not required to? Imposing a building code that requires it would only affect that one facility and not the rest that already have it. One could also pass laws that apply to new facilities but grandfather old ones until they do any renovation. Another aspect, as your video showed, a tornadoe can easily avoid one mobile home and get the next one. But when you have a facility the size of Amazon, the odds of it getting one portion of the facility are much higher because it is such a big target. If Amazon employees are not allowed to have cell phones, then they do not get the alerts sent to cell phones which are the primary means to advise people to seek shelter, and the onus would then be on Amazon to provide this on a PA system with screens that displayt the messages etc. This is definitely something that could be codified in law that every employer must ensure employees get the tornado or other alerts while at work.

Another way to think about the cost of a safety code requirement is "could this same money be spent on something else that would help save more lives in another way?"

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Great point Rob!

@MegaSuperEnrique

2 жыл бұрын

True, if you have another safety code to implement, and it is too expensive to implement both. Often the choice is "should we require the businesses to spend the money, or pass it back to stockholders and execs"

This video alone justifies my KZread subscription. I have a much better understanding of the grim realities, but I still wonder if we could research this and come up with better options in the future. As someone wiser than me once said, when we know better, we can do better.

You wouldn't send out a ship these days without enough lifeboats for everyone on board. This isn't really about trying to fortify the buildings. Something as large and flat as a warehouse is going to get shredded by a tornado. This is about whether or not businesses should be required to deploy enough safe rooms to cover everyone working there when things like this happen. They could (and probably would) be built right into the foundation for new construction, but they can (and almost certainly will be) above ground for existing buildings. Public perception factors into it as well. Do you want to work for an employer that openly says "it's not worth providing safe rooms to our employees" in the aftermath of a tornado? If the cost to do so is unreasonable, how are people doing it at home? People will stop showing up for work, or perhaps even walk out en masse, if they have nowhere to go when the warnings come through. The loss in productivity from people choosing not to go anywhere near the warehouse on tornado-prone days needs to be factored in as well.

I was so excited to see that you did a video about the tornadoes. You're a great storyteller and you explain things well. Thanks Josh and Building Integrity.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much!

Tornados are destructive. I’ve heard of tornado shelter doors being sucked right off. Shelters can also trap people under debris. I live in tornado alley, and I survived a direct hit from the May 3rd tornado. I protected myself by literally being in the safest area of the house, and covered by a queen size mattress. The tornado lifted the mattress, but my family held it down with all their strength. After that storm, my family bought an underground shelter. My work thinks it’s a good idea to have a tornado safe room on the second floor of the building, and not let employees leave during severe weather events. If a tornado hits your choices are to leave the area before the tornado hits, or seek shelter in an underground bunker. Prayer is the only thing that will save you if you’re not in a safe area. Even if you’re trying to run, if you’re close enough, the storm throws roofs, trees, and everything it picks up at really high speeds. So, you end up with busted windows during rain, severe storms, and even hail. Tornados can turn on a dime, jump over structures, and cause indirectly damage. There’s not many houses with basements, and underground tornado shelters are thousands of dollars. There’s not a lot of options for poor people, and people living in mobile homes.

I live in active part of tornado alley, so this video hit close to home. A tornado came dangerously close to us a few years back. It could be seen outdoors according to my co-workers. (I chose not to venture out to look). I hated the fact that there was no basement option for us to take shelter. We gathered in an interior windowless restroom and hoped for the best. Fortunately it skipped over us. There was damage nearby but thankfully no loss of life. Year or so later the pandemic hit and I was able to start working from home. I admit I felt some relief when our next bad storm because my home has a basement. If I had the money though, I would look into getting one of those safe rooms installed too. It is disheartening, though not surprising, to see how businesses can and do put a price tag on what a life is worth. I understand why it's done, but having been dangerously close to becoming that statistic at one point myself, it really puts me in a somber mood.

Something I noticed, after the event, was the lack of bricks and mortar in the remains. Instead, I saw lots of timber and drywall material. I'm not American. My house is nearly 30 years old. All the outer and many of the inner walls and brick. Drywall is only used as inner partition walls and a covering for the stone walls. My ceilings are heavy timber and stone. My roof is very strong and has withstood many heavy storms and 2 hurricanes. I watched several Utube videos of homes being built in the US. The structures didn't look at all sturdy.

Thank you for providing this informed, thoughtful, and balanced overview. There are practical limitations to what we can put in place to protect human life. Still, I cannot help but wonder if some creative minds might not be able to develop relatively inexpensive means of providing safe(r) areas of retreat in buildings of high occupancy.

@sootikins

2 жыл бұрын

What ever happened to storm cellars anyway?

@BTW...

2 жыл бұрын

Hazard a guess what a shipping container cast into a building deck would cost? Less than it costs to engage a grubby Lawyer to claim loss of life damages... or a grubby accountant engaged to minimise tax and limit wage increases for productive workers.

@LeighsLittleLife

2 жыл бұрын

@@BTW... I’m sure the lack of them is usually due to greed, but in some places with a high water table, it would end up flooding unless constantly pumped, and a mass of stagnant water under part of a building is its own hazard.

I would add one bit of information to the picture: Building code and other kinds of regulations speak about the minimum required level of the safety, but it doesn't mean people cannot build safer buildings. It doesn't prevent them from creating various standards, related trademarks and a certification process. You can even hire your architects, engineers, builders to achieve the level of safety you want. Building code would help a bit with economies of scale when you want some technologies, but it would prevent people who cannot afford those technologies form having any kind of housing in that region. Also, the government can regulate disclosure about various risks and give you the option to make an informed choice, this would have a smaller effect on housing affordability and the local economy. Also having some what large yards, dealing with the effects of the sprawl, etc. can make individual residences too expensive, and it could affect affordability of safer structures. Also, the size of the buildings, economies of scale, etc. can have a huge impact on affordability of various methods that could improve safety.

You mentioned that wind speed in a tornado can be 200+MPH. I know at least one of the tornadoes in the most recent outbreak maxed out the intensity scale, so you're probably looking at wind speeds there over 300 MPH, possibly approaching 400. The only thing you can do in a case like that is get out of the way.

Nice video. I worked in the nuclear power plant industry for many years and this cost/benefit analysis, especially for backfit into existing plants has always been... shall we say, controversial. On the one side you have folks that want to say that ANY risk is too great a risk, and the other side "well we got this far without that regulation..." I can see, just as you say, there will be lawsuits and a lot of back and forth about changing the building codes. But one of the questions any new regulatory requirement has to face is, "What about pre-existing structures? Do we force them to go back and upgrade?" As always, I enjoy your videos that present the issues in a clear manner.

For those talking about the pressure in a tornado...it's not the low pressure itself, but rather the rapid drop in pressure. In a tornado, you have wind forces going up against a building from multiple directions at once, and when you combine that with the rapid drop in pressure, there isn't enough time for the inside of the house to equalize. Then up goes the roof.

FEMA P-361 has a good decision tree and a link to their benefit cost analysis tool. FEMA P-320 has residential shelter plans. I’d like to see an analysis of the performance of tilt-up buildings in tornado alley. We know from the Joplin tornado that, without a roof, tilt-up walls on the south and west will fall inward and walls on the north and east will fall outward. Because tornadoes come from the south and west, this should inform us where in these massive buildings a shelter should be located. 28 people in an unreinforced training room in the Joplin Home Depot tilt-up survived when that building took a direct hit. The Amazon warehouse was the size of five football fields. The time it takes to get to a shelter from the farthest point in the building needs to be a consideration.

Another very clear and informative video. Very much look forward to your videos as you have such a gift for explaining issues in a well-defined, concise manner. And most importantly, unbiased.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Many thanks!

I have lived in northern MS most of my life and have dealt with tornadoes. I am also a huge meteorology nerd, engineering nerd, and love severe weather. Here are my thoughts. It is not feasible in many of these states to build against all tornadoes. It will simply be too expensive across all types of properties and will probably never be needed. Strong tornadoes are rare even in Tornado and Dixie alley in the US. That said, I am strongly for all new construction *residential* zones built in any area with a history of EF3 or greater tornadoes to have a storm shelter built in to them by code. For single homes this can can be made extremely cheap by just digging a hole in the garage, dropping a steel shell down it it with stairs and a sliding door with maybe a come along or hydraulic jack inside to aid in opening the door if its jammed or somethings on top. You can park your car over it normally and it doesn't force any special area of the building to need to be build or space is wasted. For apartments and trailer parks there should be community shelters people can go to and they should also be built by code. These too can be built fairly cheap by burying large culverts and topping them with concrete and adding storm doors. I am also a firm believer that every home/appartment in these areas should have a built in weather radio by code just like a smoke or carbon dioxide detector. The federal and state governments should also subsidize and provide tax breaks for those people who are building a storm shelter in their home in a retrofit fashion. I am not necessarily for a law requiring commercial and industrial building shelters but, there is ZERO excuses to have workers working while there is a tornado warning (that means a tornado is occurring and you are in its potential path). All businesses should have a tornado plan and a designated shelter area. This is no different than a fire or active shooter drill. While some places like warehouses may not have storm shelters, the people working can at least move into interior, well covered areas like bathrooms, offices, etc. It's better than being in the open warehouse. Also businesses should consider severe weather more and let people stay home on days where there is a moderate or high risk of tornadoes as determined by the NWS SPC. There should also be some way for the business to get weather warnings be it weather radio or cell phone alerts. Businesses should consider though that having storm shelters could also benefit them as safe rooms in active shooter scenarios.

Awareness is one of the most important things. People need to be alert for the incidents, but also need to be aware of the effects of the tornado. Another thing that seems to affect survival rates of tornados is access to underground shelters.

I live in Nebraska, tornado alley! Most homes have basements which serve as tornado protection. Few businesses have basements so on grade protection would be needed in or near. Then we come to the question should all businesses have safe rooms? Movie theaters, shopping malls, factories... How much warning time is there to get into a protected area? Very few building systems can take a direct hit and survive. 8 story stick built apartments are now permitted!

Brings up some memories. We were once in the market for a mobile home. We went to the builder's manufacturing site to have a look at how they were done. He explained that in certain areas of Florida there is code that requires hurricane protection. Those measures consisted of additional straps of metal secruing the stilts to the base beams. That was it! I wonder if those m/hs you showed us were built to those specs. I am only glad we never purchased that crappy m/h.

@carolgold-boyd9287

2 жыл бұрын

In my area mobile home parks (at least all the ones I covered doing the 2010 Census) all had cinderblock storm shelters. Tornado-proofing a mobile home is problematic. It's not just a matter of tying them down to a foundation, it's also whether or not wind and flying debris will disassemble them. Instead of trying to retrofit them the mobile home parks build a shelter where people can go in the event of a severe storm/tornado warning.

@user-sm3xq5ob5d

2 жыл бұрын

@@carolgold-boyd9287 I guess the best m/h would be a converted container. Those things cannot be ripped apart. And if properly anchored to a concrete slab foundation won't move an inch. To protect the windows there should be metal shutters. I guess that will tell the tornado to look elsewhere.

The owner of a Florida panhandle vacation home was interviewed on TV about five years ago, after a major storm blew through his community and took it all out, except his house. He and his uncle (New Jersey residents) designed and built the place to withstand 200 mph winds, and he said it cost about 15%-20% more than normal construction. It was a family vacation home, so they were making multi-generational decisions.

At the beginning, when you first posed the question about whether companies in Tornado Alley should build safe rooms for their employees, I immediately thought, of of course. But after watching your video, I realize it's just not that simple and my thinking was rather Pollyannish. Now I think that *some* businesses (and perhaps some schools) should, but deciding which ones...that would, and should, require more study and careful consideration.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Well said. Thank you for watching.

@lwilton

2 жыл бұрын

@@BuildingIntegrity There is also the question of _how_ safe is a "safe room". From your description people were told that the restrooms were safe rooms, and it turned out otherwise. The natural implication to be taken from that in Modern America was that management was lying thru their teeth and knew that it was the unsafest part of the building, because people are always told that management always lies thru their teeth. (And of course it often does.) But maybe they were telling he truth and it _was_ a designed safe room, and it just wasn't safe enough for the event that occurred. Or alternately, maybe Management was told that it was a safe room, and had been speced as such in the building plans, and either the contractor pocketed the money, or, again, maybe it was safe for a lower-strength event.

@LuvBorderCollies

2 жыл бұрын

@@lwilton How unsafe is "unsafe"? How safe is "safe"?? What building codes spell out what is "safe"? By whose determination? In what time period?? People will not pay for a rust proof car but are willing to put up with rust deterioration (while complaining about it). People don't want to pay and like cheap, its why we're flooded with Chy-na junk.

Of course there should be safe rooms in commercial buildings in tornado zones. This Amazon warehouse disaster is an example illustrating that corporations will not spend money to protect their employees unless required to do so. A reinforced concrete safe room sufficient to hold all who occupy the building would be a small part of the cost of a building of this type.

@cuhweenuh

2 жыл бұрын

I 100% agreed. I’m having a really hard time seeing how Amazon couldn’t afford the opportunity cost to install safe rooms. They would protect against more than just tornados and if it’s really that big of a $$ problem, They could have the safe room double as their break room which would cut costs immensely and make the safe room extremely accessible in a short notice type of emergency like tornados

@carolgold-boyd9287

2 жыл бұрын

@@cuhweenuh Yep. In my workplace the employee breakroom doubles as a tornado shelter. As do all three of the rest rooms.

I appreciate the clear presentation but neither loss of human life nor willingness-to-pay are sufficient on their own for setting policy and regulations. People in general are bad at estimating risk, especially of low-probability high-consequence events. Death is not the only consequence of the disaster that matters. Risk perception is a complex topic; learning about it fundamentally changed my outlook as a nuclear engineer (I can tell you about risk & regulation...). I know, there's only so much you can cover in a 15m video; I just wished you had noted that frequency of deaths and willingness-to-pay are (and should be) only a small part of policy-level risk assessment.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for the additional insights. Yes, I meant to preface the part about VSL and what gets considering in regulations and codes as only barely touching the surface... but you're right... time and human attention limits control our content.

@LTVoyager

2 жыл бұрын

@T.J. Kong And politicians and the media are very good at exaggerating risks beyond all reason to try to scare people into following ill-advised policies. Covid reaction has demonstrated this in spades.

@lwilton

2 жыл бұрын

@@LTVoyager Actually the media do it to get you to follow the media and maximize their ad revenues. Some years back the top executive of one of the major networks actually stated that the purpose of the network news was to scare the people so much that they would be too frightened to go out, or in fact to do anything except sit in front of the TV watching their programming to see what next horror was about to befall them, since that way they would be watching the channel 24/7, and maximizing ad revenues, which are based on the number of viewer hours.

@LTVoyager

2 жыл бұрын

@@lwilton Although, I think that “CNN model” is failing. Look at CNN’s viewership numbers compared to Fox.

This is a very well done and level-headed analysis..... Clearly a much bigger topic than could be unpacked in a 15 minute video, but this does a nice job of broaching the subject and saying hey, analysis is required, before new laws are passed, or what have you.... I think where people get a little worked up on this topic is this... Regulations are here in Florida, that your roof must be strapped, your garage door has a wind rating on it, and a plethora of other rules.... AT THE TIME YOU ARE BUILDING THE HOUSE, that stuff doesn't add that much, to the price of the house.... Let's say an extra $1500, to a $270,000 house?? That doesn't seem that onerous, on anyone, but the big builders fight this stuff tooth and nail... I personally wonder why... It's those regulations, that make a difference sometimes. I bought my house here, and the Building Inspector I got was very good... He got me out of 3 house deals, because he found so many issues with the houses... On this one, he verified everything, took pictures in the attic, of every requirement being met, every construction technique being implemented, and basically verification that yes, this house meets every rule on the books today..... Which, I'm not gonna lie, at least now I know, this house meets some level of a "standard" of being hurricane proof.... Not that there are any guarantees in life, but....

In Australia we have cyclones. I have had two Category 5 pass over my head. These are two hundred MPH plus and not for the faint of heart. We have a building code that specifies the likelihood of these evets. Any modern structure has to be built to the relevant code. No excuses and no exceptions. Mostly it works but there are cyclone allies where the return rate is only 12 to 20 years. We weathered out the first cyclone but the second one 12 years later was much larger and slower moving so there longer and it was very destructive. My good friend said I should build a bomb shelter and it is almost essential for living in the tropics. The real cost of building high strength suitable structures goes down when it is done EVERY time. Great content. Keep up the good work.

People dont realize that a tornadoes damage is about 50% wind damage and 50%debris flying around. Thats the majority of the deaths i think is people being hit by flying debris at 200mph . When they build safe rooms in ok they yest their structures by shooting a 2x4 at it at a mph of 150mph in order for it to pass

Another point: perhaps up to half of the annual fatalities yearly occur somewhere other than a site-built structure like a home or commercial building. Building codes only affect the remainder and most people that die in site-built structures die from the most violent EF-4 and EF-5 tornadoes which are statistically rare but very rarely occur without warning. They only occur in the most extreme synoptic and mesoscale environments and are produced typically in long-lived, highly-monitored (every storm chaser in an area can pick them out) supercell thunderstorms. Thirty minutes before the tornado hit the Amazon warehouse, I knew that it was on the ground and moving in that direction. Amazon had plenty of time to even send their workers to a better shelter miles away but I will tell you from my experience in industrial workplaces that most managers do not consider the lives of their workers to be worth $10M. I've been in an office building involved in a sales meeting in the path of a tornado ON THE GROUND with the PA system ordering everyone into the stairwells and this single sales manager from Seattle refused to interrupt the meeting until the trees outside the window began falling. A BMW 930 series sedan in the parking lot took a large tree right down the middle and I hope it was his car for endangering everyone.

Could you touch on the cost effectiveness of basements, storm cellars, and safe rooms in detail. In North Texas we have expansive soils that wreck foundations so those can add costs to underground structures but most homes have no protection from Tornadoes. Perhaps it would be more cost effective if one of the bathrooms (or any room) in a house was fortified to safe room standards instead of requiring a stand-alone saferoom so that it at least fulfills dual purposes.

I saw an article about a lawsuit being filed against Amazon. I have to say that it seemed ill worded and unreasonable. Who would expect a business to evacuate a business during a tornado warning? In a vehicle is the worst place to be during a tornado. The advice is to seek shelter, away from windows on the lowest level. As this video stated, the chance of being in a building that is hit by a tornado is low. Tornado warnings cover a large area and a tornado will only damage a small fraction of a percent of that area if 1 occurs. I have been in a lot of tornado warnings and only seen a handful of tornadoes (in the distance) and never had my home damaged. Most are even safe enough to watch.

What a refreshing presentation of realistic, logical and factual information on this subject.

Same areas of industry in the UK, most obviously our railways, use a Fatality and Weighted Injury Rate to inform investment decisions. The scale is (simplified) that 1 Fatality = 10 Major Injuries (basically serious hospitalisation with a likelihood of life-changing impact) = 200 Reportable Minor (7 days or more off work) = 1000 non-reportable minor (other injury, typically 3 or more days off work) = 200 Shock/Trauma Class 1 (involved in or witness event with potentially fatal outcome) = 1000 Shock/Trauma Class 2 (Involved in or witness near miss or accident that is typically non-fatal or (serious) verbal abuse) I'm not here to argue if the ratios are appropriate but using such a scale does mean that injuries and trauma gets factored into safety investment decisions, it also means that deaths an injuries that normally don't get factored in to assessments (like people deliberately taking, or attempting to take, their own life) start to feature because of the number of people who might witness the event. 10M USD to prevent one death, 1M USD to prevent a life changing class of injury, 50,000 USD to keep someone out of hospital, 10,000 USD to keep someone from having to sign off work. We can argue the finer points but it seems ball-park correct.

@gordonrichardson2972

2 жыл бұрын

The value of life saved equation is often amended by adding injury and disability estimates (and age). It's a whole 'science', far outside the scope of this video.

The traditional assumption of a bathroom being safe stems from the idea that if there is a bathtub in there, you could lay inside it and hopefully avoid some flying debris. that's about it, because many bathrooms are actually built along the edges of a building with windows, not always buried deep within the structure. a doorway is also long considered a strong-point during an earthquake.

I knew about this from an engineering point of view but I wonder if this is also done in healthcare? For example, if some annual screening test is recommended for a new age group, is the cost of the test, false positives, false negatives, and the detection rate considered? Excellent explanation you have provided here (as usual).

@gordonrichardson2972

2 жыл бұрын

Some countries use the value of lives saved (and disability avoided) to evaluate healthcare, others do not (depends on where you live).

Another great teaching video! Thank you Josh!

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

Glad you liked it!

Nice job, as always. We prefer to live in a converted missile silo, just to be sure. Our blast doors meet code requirement of 3 tons. Dr Strangelove, PhD, University of Heidelberg, 1936.

I really enjoy your common sense explanations and discussions. Thanks for bringing them to us.

We have 3 public shelters in my little town in tornado alley, one is a nuclear fallout shelter in the court house, one is in the newly built prek/kindergarten building lunch room, ef5 rated (and according to their plaque on the wall, rated to withstand a direct hit from a tomahawk missile, I’ll believe it when I see it) and one in the newly built wrestling room at the high school, ef5 rated. Here’s the other thing, if there’s rotation I’m going home. Fuck the job. I remember at Sam’s Club our manager telling a group of us that if there was touch down we had to get under the steel shelving in the clothing area, company policy. I told her absolutely not, I’d be leaving, she said ‘you’d be fired’ and I told her that the store would turn into projectile pit if a tornado ripped through, she wouldn’t be alive to fire me. Valuing your employment over your life is insane.

I've seen people complain because a meteorologist interrupted "American Idol" to tell them about a tornado and give them all the information that they need to survive it and they just don't care. It really only takes one time being in a tornado to produce a radical reordering of one's priorities but many people will not listen. They are so driven by the need to be entertained and ignorant of the risks of the real world that they must be shocked into paying the appropriate respect to the weather. Sadly, some do not survive the lesson.

I'm curious if they could make several underground centers that could survive tornadoes, like the shopping or casino centers under Reno, well not sure if those can withstand a tornado, but they're big basements I think with a fair amount of space. I would think with businesses inside it would pay for itself in time, and a bit of engineering thought in its structural reinforcements should keep them relatively safe.

@AreeyaKKC

2 жыл бұрын

Those would have to be earthquake proof. Under reno

@mjinba07

2 жыл бұрын

I grew up in a state which gets tornadoes. Basements do provide some protection but the kind of large, open basement space one would expect in a warehouse or a large public setting would probably offer little more protection than a wide depression in the landscape, once the above ground structure is torn off. Even in our house basement, we were taught to huddle in the southwest corner, as there's better chance that a tornado would skip over that angle as it passes. No guarantees, of course, and the risk of being hit with ballistic debris is greater than a direct hit from the tornado. But if businesses were to build an actual, reinforced basement shelter for their employees, that would be smart.

@AreeyaKKC

2 жыл бұрын

@@mjinba07 warehouse underground shelters would be difficult to make since the roof would have to hold up product and forklifts etc.

@juliaweber212

2 жыл бұрын

I agree

@mjinba07

2 жыл бұрын

@@AreeyaKKC Maybe the shelter could be positioned under the earthen surround, not directly under the warehouse.

Most of the comments I've seen regarding the Amazon warehouse and the candle factory aren't even calling for building code updates. From what I've seen, most people just want laws that hold managers and companies responsible for employee deaths if they prevent an employee from leaving work to avoid a natural disaster. You mention the tornado shelters present in so many homes- chances are, those employees that died could've gone home to one such shelter instead of dying under the threat of unemployment. For most people, it isn't about the buildings; it's about the companies, the managers, and the abusive business practices.

Fact check: tornadoes are TINY compared to hurricanes which are massive often several states wide. So I believe you actually mean when a “tornado” likeliness of visiting the same spot ... I really do appreciate your video content-it’s a wonderful way you teach! Thank you!

Thank you for explaining this in a comprehensive way for a lay person. Great video.

@BuildingIntegrity

2 жыл бұрын

You're very welcome!

I live in an area with relatively calm weather. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a place where there is a chance, albeit incredibly low, that your whole house can blown away in a matter of seconds.

I have been in one tornado, very close to a second and had a funnel cloud pass directly over my house. Yes we were outside watching the funnel cloud as it passed over. We made all the kids go and hide under the stairs. LOL I guess you hope and pray that it is a small one, and its just a glancing blow. If its a the big one, EF5, nothing you can do. Make yourself as small as possible and crawl in a hole, I guess. I don't even live in "tornado alley".