We sent a small donation to the Red Cross. I have heard often enough that that the Red Cross is among the first to show up when and where needed. I hope others donate as well. Good wishes are not enough and a small donation is better than none at all.
Did anyone notice from news pictures that motor vehicles take a beating but appear intact? It make me think that without a basement or a tornado shelter, a good place to hide from a tornado might be your car. Get in, fasten your seat belt, wear a heavy jacket, gloves and a motorcycle helmet with a face shield if you have one to protect yourself from the breaking glass and then brace yourself for the crash.
One of our local weathermen who spent some time at school in Norman, south of Moore, used the term Fraidy Hole. I thought at first that he was being funny but search that for shelter information if interested.
Your weather radar is amazing if not somewhat unnerving. I remember travel trailer camping in Arkansas ten or twelve years back during some seriously heavy weather and staying up most of the night watching for the appearance of the dreaded ‘echo hook.’ That super outbreak in 1974 is a really amazing event which of course was televised and heavily documented unlike the Tri State Tornado which killed over twice as many people in a much shorter time frame.
CNN showed a horse that landed on the building rubble. Didn’t know where it came from or how far it flew but was a ways anyway and seemingly unhurt. Never been in one and never seen one really but my sister was in the one in Fridley, MN around 1965. No damage but said it was the freight train sound.
A car is not a particularly good thing to be in. Better to lie flat in a ditch if you have to. Most people in Minnesota have basements so thats where you go. I used to worry at work where to put everyone if it came to that and always prefered the rest rooms or the part that had a concrete ceiling. Block walls on a one story structure scare me because they can be so unstable with no weight on them or not tied in to ceiling trusses. Just doesn’t take anything to knock a block wall down, and from the pictures looks like they were not core filled either.
People are resilient though and will get through it. Good luck to everyone. The season is just starting.
It was tragic enough but those kids dying with their parents not around makes it even worse. The schools were due to be out for the summer on May 23 and the tornado hit at 3 P.M. if the tornado had only happened a few days later or even a half hour later the death toll might have been a little less at least.
There are a number of horse farms in the outlying areas around Moore and on south so that’s probably where the horse came from. One rancher there lost something like 75-100 horses at last report and they were having to go around and put a number of badly injured ones down.
The outpouring of support for the victims has been astronomical. Many of the OK City Thunder NBA players were even turning out to help or offer their support including Kevin Durant who chipped in an even million dollars.
Bing Quote: “A car is not a particularly good thing to be in.” Unquote
Your reason to say that? If I am in error, that’s ok, I can live with that but give some rationonale.
We have occasional tornadoes where I live in WI and any option while in panic mode might be useful. Several years ago I missed being in a tornado by about a half hour while in my car (didnt know that a tornado was coming) and my house missed it by about a mile.
Viewing Google earth’s images of the Moore neighborhood around Plaza Towers Elementary School showed middle class neighborhoods of brick, ranch style, single story homes that were popular in my area from the early 60s until the mid 80s. My home is similar to those. And such construction has the appearance of being quite sound. But the news stories that I see show the neighborhoods totally leveled as though it was a mobile home park. How can that be?
The ‘brick’ construction is wood frame construction with a brick veneer. But actually no regular home can stand up to an F5 tornado. Sometimes call the ‘thumb (or finger) of God’…
Yes, it’s brick veneer, @texases. But it must add some degree of strength to the shell of the home. My wife was petrified when storm warnings were made in the area and we bought the house I now live in because it has a walk out basement which gave her some sense of protection from tornadoes which are quite common in the area. I have seen tornadoes take the roofs off houses similar to mine and those I saw in Moore OK but never have I seen such houses totally obliterated.
F4/F5 tornados are, thankfully, very rare, and it’s even rarer to have them hit a town/city. But when they do the destruction is immense. Homes in OK and TX often are slab construction, and some F5 tornados only leave the slab behind. Unbelievable destruction.
"Bing Quote: “A car is not a particularly good thing to be in.” Unquote
Your reason to say that? If I am in error, that’s ok, I can live with that but give some rationonale."
Well, I’m not an expert and don’t intend to be one but flying glass and debris is a major issue. A car is filled with lots of glass and once the glass is gone, lots of openings for 2x4’s, bricks, and other items to come flying through while you’re sitting there with your seat belt on. Plus, F4s and F5s will pick up cars and twirl them and deposit them someplace else. So if you can picture yourself sitting in a car with debris being blown all around at 200 mph while the car is being twirled in the air and deposited upside down somewhere, and think that is safer than hunkering down in a ditch or culvert, wish you well.
@Wha_Who: “We sent a small donation to the Red Cross… I hope others donate as well.”
My mother has told me a story about when she was visiting her aunt in Missouri. The area flooded, and the Red Cross was indeed quick to show up. They were selling coffee to the flood victims. You read that correctly. They were charging the victims for the coffee. After hearing that story, I look for more worthy charities.
Also, the CEO of the Red Cross makes $500,000/year in salary alone. I interpret that to mean they don’t need my money. I don’t think anyone who works for a charity should make more than $250,000/year.
The reality is that in an EF4 or EF5 tornado, about all you can do is bend over and kiss your butt goodbye. If you survive one of these and you are not in a storm shelter rated for that, then you got lucky. Even a basement won’t save you when the winds pick up the house and start throwing things like telephone poles at you down there.
One of the news shows indicated that it takes about 11" of reinforced concrete to protect you from the debris being tossed around by an EF5. A brick house just isn’t up to that standard. They can withstand an EF3 if the roof is held on with tornado straps. Concrete block walls aren’t up to the task either, but a lot of people believe that schools and public building constructed with them are a safe place to ride out the storm.
What bothers me is this “we are going to rebuild” attitude. Thats OK for a once in a lifetime event, but when you have two EF4 and two EF5 tornadoes in 15 years all following the same path within a mile of each other, I don’t think it is a good idea to rebuild. I think that patch of ground might be better suited to agricultural use and build a little more out of the way.
When my neighbor was building his house, he had one section of block wall that blew over three times before he could get the floor joists on it to tie it together. There is virtually no lateral strength to a block wall unless there is some core filling, and even then not much.
Brick walls as said, are mostly just veneer like siding and add no strength at all. In fact there is an air gap between the brick facade and wall structure. I have them.
Some houses are using the poured concrete in styrofoam forms that would take quite a wind shear. Blut still windows, doors, roofs, siding, etc. are still a problem and there are some other building issues to deal with. So its not a real popular concept except for basements and Habitat houses.
I’ll have to say that each Red Cross chapter is a little different. I’ve never heard of that happening in Minnesota. It was interesting though that the web page did not exactly allow designating to the OK disaster, just to the general disaster fund in Washington. The Salvation Army page, did allow for direct designation to OK.
I would agree with keith about rebuilding in that area but I can practically guarantee it will happen no matter what. The areas south of that housing addition and along I-35 all the way to Norman used to be wheat fields and so on. It’s built up the entire distance now and things are not likely to change.
There’s too much traffic (ka-ching) and valuable land along that corridor so unfortunately, this may repeat itself at some point.
Keith is also correct about the force of a tornado like that. During the one some years ago where a number of people were killed, some had tried to take shelter by crawling up underneath an underpass. The underpass remained intact but they lost their lives anyway.
Back in the 70s I got caught in a tornado one night although as per the norm, the strength was not reported at the time and I actually had no idea I was even in one until hours later. When the pickup started going backwards, lifting off the pavement, and rotating 90 degrees before settling back down crossways in the highway I knew something bad was going on but no idea what. From that point on I figured my life was over and half of the glass on the truck exploding in and throwing me over the steering wheel didn’t help either…
I like to live in a low disaster prone area. I only have to worry about distant volcanoes and their accompaning earthquakes. I’m more concerned about China’s air pollution reaching the PNW than anything else.
Sympathize for the unfortunate. Nature is not something to be ignored.
“They were charging the victims for the coffee. After hearing that story, I look for more worthy charities.”
If you think that is bad, Whitey, ask a US Army veteran who served in Vietnam about his opinion of The Red Cross. Just be sure to duck, so that you aren’t hit by a roundhouse punch.
The Red Cross’s practice of selling blood (for $40 per pint, IIRC) to wounded soldiers who needed a transfusion was a real sore point with those who served in Vietnam.
I have seen this type of devastation first hand working storms for my job, It sucks and leaves behind a trail of heartache and pain. Its not fair. It puts things in perspective, sometimes the human race as a whole seems to be in control of everything, but we are no match for mother nature. God bless them.
