Yeah, just watched some footage of the one passing thru Moore. Bonkers.
Tulsa’s probably gonna get hit in 1-2 hours I figure, FYI.
— Alan
robsam
1703
OKC is getting HAMMERED at this moment. Monster tornado, a helicopter cam is broadcasting it live.
EDIT: South of OKC, on ground for thirty minutes. This could be bad. Video from the path is showing slabs that homes were on, I hope nobody was in those homes.
The damage path is immense and the devastation is terrible right now. Moore, hammered yet again.
— Alan
robsam
1705
Now reporting it was 1.5 miles wide, on ground for just under an hour. Just horrific damage to buildings. If they were occupied it will be a miracle if anyone survived.
robsam
1706
This is a shot of a house from the tornado in my town in 2011. A large section of Moore looks like this.
Calling this tornado the “worst tornado in the history of the world” might be exaggerating, I dunno. Surely bad, in any event.
— Alan
cannedwombat, supposedly large tornado on the ground north of Tulsa, moving NE. Tulsa proper may get some rain in 30 minutes and some hail. The storms around OKC are kinda/sorta headed that way but fairly far off right now.
— Alan
robsam
1709
Regarding Alan’s comment about exaggerating I agree, it’s too soon to tell, people had lots of time to hide and/or get out of town. I’m just looking at the slabs that used to hold buildings and thinking if anyone was in them, they didn’t survive. Certainly not making predictions on fatalities or anything like that. To be honest I couldn’t believe more people weren’t killed here in 2011 based on the destruction to buildings, so hopefully the people of Moore will be as fortunate as we were.
Thanks Alan, keeping an eye on it. I’m in southern Tulsa, so no worries. Yet. :-)
RichVR
1713
Just watched a plane get hit by lightning from my front porch. Very unexpected. Very amazing. No disrespect to others in the thread. I’ve just never seen it happen before.
robsam
1714
MSNBC is reporting that “two dozen” students have been killed in their school. The first responders have gone from rescue to recovery. Fuck.
Everyone’s getting that from a local TV station, presumably one with good sources inside the first responder community. Awful.
What percentage of these homes have secure basements? Pretty much all of them? Hopefully…
Even though that number is completely believably given the circumstances, here’s hoping and praying it’s wildly high.
robsam
1718
I may tell my tornado story at length later in this thread, I actually have two. The south is becoming the New Tornado Alley so we are starting to learn and adjust. We suck at it, but at least we try to deal with the problem. This monster was pretty much going to kill anything in it’s path that wasn’t underground according to the experts, so I won’t dare to criticize the people that took a direct hit. In fact I won’t criticize anyone because who the fuck am I to do that? I just can’t understand why more people in a known tornado zone (probably not a real thing but you know what I mean) didn’t have underground shelters. I am just as guilty, I drive by tornado shelter places a few times a week, just simple formed metal or some sort of formed substance that you bury in the yard or under the slab in your garage. They look like little life pods, not comfortable really, and are relatively small. You pop the lid, jump in, lock the latch and wait. Screw this, I’m rambling, not being fair, I just get emotionally broken when multiple children die suddenly. I’ll try to do better later.
Similar to Texas, many homes in Oklahoma do not have underground storm shelters (though they are definitely higher in usage). There’s a few reasons for this: they cost money, they are underground, the ground is not easy to dig in (usually red clay or some form thereof, which is incredibly difficult), and frankly people just don’t do it. People play the risks, figure even in Oklahoma that the chances of getting hit by a total destructive EF4-5 tornado where having an underground shelter makes the difference would be fairly slim. Especially in the same town like Moore.
I read one book about storm chasing, most of which I thought was ridiculously dumb, that postulated that people know that tornadoes can just blow through and wreck everything anyway, so what’s the point of investing heavily in a home when it can be destroyed so easily? The answer was that you didn’t, you just survive (or not) and move on. It’s almost like a defeatist attitude but not quite. Not really a fan of that theory.
— Alan
It’s less “playing the risks” and more the soil issue. It’s hard to dig, hard to build (extra reinforcing/engineering required because of the clay “flexing” throughout the seasons), hard to waterproof, and will more than likely crack and sink sooner or later no matter what. Oklahoma is kind of the perfect combination of terrible soil to build shelters in and the worst place to not have a shelter, but putting a basement in clay soil is oftentimes prohibitively expensive, especially in that real estate market.
