Our home town area almost erased

[gothiccandy]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEnKp3TR7Kc]YouTube - Hail and Tornado Damage[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SwhPzBhMk]YouTube - Glade EF3 Tornado Aftermath (4/27/11)[/ame]


Thankfully, no one we love got hurt.

[grave_digga]

Well, each time i see those stuff on the TV i ask myself why americans mostly build this type of houses. It's only logical that they get blasted away during an hurrican. A house made of stone would maybe loose its roof or the windows but it'll not get blown away like this houses made of wood and gypsum...

[Mindf!3ldzX]

My grandparents home has a below ground level basement area, it used to be my uncles darkroom for photography. These freak weather outbreaks are getting a bit crazy!

[grave_digga]

Well over here (germany) it's just normal to have a below ground level basement area (cellar). Houses normaly made of thick stone walls and the roofs are tiled, just like this for example:



What i don't understand is why the people in america rebuild these crappy wood houses again when they get lost. Also the electronics. All is done overground and when the next hurrican/blizzard/whatever happens it's all wrecked and the electric of many people is gone. Would be much easier to do it 1 time right and put the cables under the earth. Then this will never happen again. I'll do not blame you, it's just something i couldn't understand.

[R00k]

Future American Housing...



But honestly GraveDigga, you cant look at one neighborhood from the news and say all houses are like that in America. You can argue that why are some American houses built outta wood, but for the most part, wood is cheaper, but there are plenty brick houses too.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Fact is, not many buildings stand up any of these forces. Roofs arent made typically of anything more than Wood,Resin Paper and Shingles.

http://www.wcyb.com/slideshow/news/27707774/detail.html <---

[LambentHammerBurst]

Weather is hitting everywhere. I soon could be going offline for awhile as we are getting flooding in the city.
Some shots here:
Your Weather: A bird's eye view - The Weather Network
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/you...ppelle/upload/
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/you...ppelle/upload/

To get more shots - just type in:
Fort Qu'Appelle

and you'll see more of the flood shots.

[grave_digga]

Im pretty sure the house itself (when it's solid build) will stand these forces. Maybe the roof will loose its tiles or the windows will be damaged but the house would not get down. If you look at the videos/pictures of the damaged areas the only things you see still standing are brickwalls. I've seen many houses in the New York/New Jesey area and most of them where build of wood, gypsum and polystyrene and the people told me it's the normal way to build a house in the US. And the prices for such a "plastic" house are the same then a for a solid house build here.

The same thing is with flooding as ooppee mentioned. At our New York visit (Setember 2000) we had also a hurricane coming up the east coast. When it arrived New AYork it was still labeled Tropical Storm Floyd. Well, it was raining outide and windy like here in fall. After a while i asked my aunt when the tropical sorm will arise, she told me that it is allready here. wtf? It's only raining and a bit windy. After some hours there were messages about flooding on the TV. My grandchild could not went to school because of flooding and some areas of New York was also closed. Only from a few yours of rain. I think this came from the bad drain system in the New York area, even flushing the toilet was horrible...

As i told before i wouldn't blame anybody for that but that are my impressions of the USA. Well, only a short look (2 weeks) at this great country but something that changed my whole view for the states.

[R00k]

um,

this is a tornado. I dont care what kinda brick shit house u have. unless its 20 feet underground, its comming up.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD7sSb0DB24[/ame]

[ninjamonkeyz]

well an ef5 tornado, can destroy just about anything in its path regardless of what materials its made of, with wind speed well over 200 mph, and if not the wind itself then the debris it hurls around. I have heard weird stories about tornadoes, about them picking up a person and moving them safely to another spot etc.. I think tornadoes are a lot more dangerous than a hurricane, because people have several days if not weeks to prepare for it coming, where as people in the path of a tornado only have a warning to take cover mins before it touches down.

[ninjamonkeyz]

im sorry to hear about your home town, that has to be hard.. I'm glad everybody in your family was safe.

[golden_boy]

Maybe certain building standards should be enforced by the government. But of course that would be worse than tornadoes, since it's socialism

We do have tornadoes in Germany btw, 15-30 per year, granted they're not as big as yours, but they do damage buildings and kill people. I think this one was F2:

wetterspiegel.de | Aktuelles Wetter, Wetterprognose & Wetterradar

Von Hamburg nach Mecklenburg-Vorpommern - Tornado deckt 60 Dächer ab - Gemeinde unter Schock - Norddeutschland - Region - Hamburger Abendblatt

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado...us_Deutschland

[Spike]

its the lifting action of stuff like that that destroys things, I'd rather be in the house grave_digga posted an image of rather than the other one. the american one's roof looks like it'll come off much more easily.
the thing about tiles is that they might kill your neighbours if they get blown through a window, but they're not too likely to kill the occupants of the house they're from, unless of course the entire roof has holes under it or under the rim that allows strong winds to lift.
brick requires morter to hold it in place, plastic/wooden things are generally nailed, as a result, brick is stronger in the face of strong winds because its far less likely that the wind can get in and rattle/lift anything in the brick structure itself. it can still get hit by trees and debris from other buildings which can still destroy a wall, of course.
stronger building standards would prevent roofs from being ripped up so often as there would be less possible upwards lift in a better designed roof edge, if nothing else it would encourage builders to think about upwards lift a little more. It won't help so much in the center of the storm sure, but if you're on the periphery of it, you won't have to rebuild your entire house, just retile the roof.
that's my take on it, anyway.

The UK gets a few tornadoes each year, I think the frequency is above average, but you never even notice them because they so rarely actually touch the ground.
But nooo, the US has to do everything bigger, stronger, faster!

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Local pilot killed in Glade Spring tornado, wife in intensive care | TriCities.com

Ronnie and Brenda Offield went to sleep Wednesday night in a solid brick house.

Brick Houses are more rigid yes,but what happens when it meets forces that move real cars like their hotwheel or matchbox counterparts? [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEbRBaytsQg[/ame]

Tornado's in the appalachia valley aren't common, science teachers liked to push the idea that the mountains relative close proximity pretty much made these things extremely rare freaks of nature.

[Spike]

heh, that wall is a third of the thickness required in the UK, where does the insulation go? :/