Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 3:44am

Why Live In Tornado Alley?

Response to the devastating EF-5 tornado in Moore, Okla., which left 24 dead and more than 200 injured, has generally been compassionate. Thousands of ordinary Americans — including fellow survivors of natural disasters — are doing what they can to help.

In the fetid swamps of internet discourse, however, there are always those who use such disasters to advance their pet political or ideological agenda (e.g., climate change, government assistance, atheism vs. religion), or to question why the victims did, or failed to do, certain things that placed them in harm’s way.

Common questions asked after this tornado and others in recent years include why so many homes in the affected areas didn’t have basements, or why reinforced tornado shelters aren’t required for particularly vulnerable locations such as schools and mobile home parks.

These are legitimate questions, but the purpose of this post is not to discuss the merits of various tornado safety measures. Rather, it is to explore the implications of a broader question that is frequently asked after these events — “Why would anyone live in Tornado Alley?”

It’s no secret that Oklahoma is the epicenter of Tornado Alley. The Oklahoma City metro area, which includes Moore, gets hit by tornadoes more frequently than any other. An F-5 tornado of comparable intensity swept through Moore just 14 years ago, in 1999. (Thankfully, there were fewer fatalities this time.)

With that in mind, some might question whether the 1,200-plus Moore residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed should rebuild anything without a concrete bunker. Similar sentiments were expressed by those who questioned the wisdom of attempting to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — you know the same thing is going to happen again, so why set yourself up for it and expect the rest of the country (via federal disaster assistance) to bail you out when it does?

A common reply to that argument is that there are few, if any, places on earth that are immune to natural disasters. The Gulf Coast and East Coast are in danger from hurricanes and tropical storms; the West Coast could be endangered by tsunamis or even volcanic activity; any town or city along a river could be subject to flooding; and numerous fault lines could cause earthquakes throughout the United States.

In addition, tornado damage, even from the biggest and most devastating twisters, covers only a fraction of the land area that a major hurricane or a severe earthquake would impact. The odds of a tornado striking any particular spot, even in the heart of Tornado Alley, are minimal. Please note that I am not arguing against reasonable building codes or insurance regulations that may mitigate the impact of tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes; nor am I advocating any particular approach to private or public disaster assistance. I am simply pointing out that there is no absolutely safe place on earth.

Some who question the wisdom of living in Tornado Alley — which is hard to precisely define since tornadoes occur regularly in most states between the Rockies and Applalachians — do so simply because they are not personally accustomed to or prepared for tornadoes. (In college, one of my dorm mates was a girl from California who was terrified of tornadoes but not bothered at all by earthquakes.) Others, however, do so with more than a bit of condescension, apparently convinced that the “bitter clingers” who insist on living in red states represented by “climate change deniers” deserve what they get.

In the end, “why live in Tornado Alley” is perhaps one facet of a deeper philosophical and spiritual question that everyone has to face: why take chances? What, if anything, makes exposing yourself to loss, injury or death worth it? Does the love one has for one’s home, neighbors, community and way of life make it worth trying to put it back together, even if that means it could just be destroyed again?

Prudence is a cardinal virtue, and there is, of course, nothing wrong with taking reasonable precautions against material loss or personal danger. But an absolute insistence on avoiding all risk and all suffering plays directly into the culture of death and of the anti-family mentality we sadly see today. Why have children, if they might suffer? Why marry, if your spouse may cause you heartache? Why not just put elderly, sick, or handicapped people out of their misery? Why not declare grief a disease that demands a cure? Why not give up or take away constitutional rights if it means that lives could be saved?

In The Four Loves C.S. Lewis summarized the real danger in this approach to life:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

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Ioannes
Ioannes
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 1:15am

Why do these natural disasters happen?
In one of the letters we read that the earth “is still groaning with labour pains”. Then in apocolypse we read how there will be a new earth. Blessedly, our Heavenly Father comforts us even though we are not yet in the new world but witness the labour pains of the earth. His love for us is great!

Foxfier
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 1:51am

“Why would anyone live in Tornado Alley?”

So… where’s this alley that tornadoes know they’re not allowed to hit outside of?

More seriously– this isn’t exactly building on the side of an active volcano! I’d ask a similar question of folks who live in Hawaii before I’d ask entire swaths of some of the most productive land on earth why they live where they live.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 6:01am

I think the median annual death toll from tornadoes in this country is about 70, and the United States logs about two-thirds of the world’s tornadoes. It is just not a big risk factor. The persistent aversion of Southerners to basements is curious; can the engineering challenge posed by the water table be that severe?

A more interesting question is why people in Tornado Alley and everywhere else in America have accepted the horrors of suburban town planning over the last sixty years.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 6:07am

If I am not mistaken, the active volcano(es?) on Hawaii are all on the Big Island. About 9/10ths of the population of the state live on the other islands. I am not sure much of population of even the Big Island is in a danger zone. Hilo was walloped by a tsunami in 1960; I do not think any of the eruptions of Mauna Loa in the intervening years have disrupted the life of population centers.

Now, if you want to ask why the people of Oahu allowed greater Honolulu to grow into an overpriced ticky-tacky mess, that would be an interesting question.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 6:10am

I have my own question for the East Coast Elite who look down at Oklahoma.

Why would anyone live on the East Coast? The East Coast just got clobbered by a massive hurricane last October, causing death and damage that exceeded the Oklahoma tornado. The East Coast is vulnerable to hurricanes and nor’ easters, which also cause destruction and death.

No East Coast elitist snob will dare answer that with anything other than “climate change”, which we know is a fraud.

East coast politics stink, the cost of living and taxation there stink, the traffic there stinks….you can have it. Of course, when a snowstorm shuts down DC, it’s national news (and it only takes an inch or two to be a DC snowstorm).

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 7:27am

“The persistent aversion of Southerners to basements is curious; can the engineering challenge posed by the water table be that severe?”

In Louisiana it is. We even bury them above ground.

Paul W Primavera
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 7:57am

“Why live in Tornado Alley?”

Why live in the continental US where an eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano is long overdue and would render uninhabitable the greater part of the North American continent, and cause world-wide climatic change for decades to come?

Why live on the East Coast that would be flooded for hundreds of miles inland from a tsunami caused by the long overdue Canary Island volcano eruption and resulting land slide?

Why live on the West Coast where the San Andreas fault is long overdue for a major shift with resultant disastrous earthquake?

Why live on planet Earth which is long overdue for a major asteroid impact such as what happened 60 million years ago on the Yucatan peninsula? Or overdue for a major coronal mass ejection from the sun, destroying all electronics and sending us back to the 19th century for decades and decades? That happened in 1859 and is called the Carrington Event. It destroyed early telegraph machines and would wipe out all our electrical power plants, computers, transformers, generators, etc. from the EMP pulse.

The idea that there is a safe place to live is erroneous. No place is ever ultimately safe, and each one has its own hazards. Some recur over and over, and cause localized damage (tornados in the central US). Others occur every few decades (major east coast hurricane). Still others occur once a century or so such as the Tunguska meteor impact in Siberia in 1908 or the Carrington Event in 1859. The bottom line is this: all God has to do is remove His protecting hand. One little asteroid – say a mile in diameter – or one little hiccup from the sun and our fragile hold on civilization is brushed aside without the Almighty lifting even His little finger. And with our national – even planetary – embrace of sodomy, lesbianism, adultery, fornication, and abortion we are asking God to remove His protecting hand. Buckle up, folks, for the sad event in Oklahoma (which I do NOT claim is a punishment – sometimes random destruction occurs for no reason other than entropy) is nothing compared to what can really happen and has happened before in the history of our planet.

LarryD
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 10:09am

Geez, Paul’s just gone ahead and depressed me…

j/k, Paul.

Tony H
Tony H
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 10:46am

Basements are definitely a cultural thing that varies by national region. I lived in Texas for some years and remember asking why none of the houses had basements. “Water table’s too high” was one person’s response. This same person had a storm cellar on their property that was bone dry.
Now I live along the Lake Michigan shoreline where everyone has a basement but really shouldn’t. A bad rain storm and a broke sump pump will turn our basements into in-ground swimming pools.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 11:04am

Folks freak out more about dangers that they’re less familiar with– plus, places you don’t know seem smaller. Some of my facebook folks that live in Colorado were reassuring family in Europe that no, they hadn’t been hurt in the tornadoes….

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 11:04am

(Oh, and I wonder how many of the folks fussing about risk live in the area of St. Helens, like myself?)

Paul W Primavera
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 11:33am

“Oh, and I wonder how many of the folks fussing about risk live in the area of St. Helens…”

Safest place to live – near commercial nuclear power plants. I live near four – the two McGuire PWRs to the northwest and the two Catawba PWRs to the southeast. I live about in the center. A little nukie never hurt anyone! Ha! Ha! Your friendly neighborhood nuke simply can’t resist an opportunity.

Sir Louis
Sir Louis
Friday, May 24, AD 2013 11:33pm

Hey, basements actually have a structural function. In places where the ground freezes to a significant depth, they keep the foundation from heaving up. But avoid a basement if you can because one of the most expensive things you can do, believe it or not, is dig a big hole in the ground. If you want the living space, it’s much cheaper to build it above ground. We have calice around here. My neighbor dug a relatively small hole in the ground and it cost him $4,500 just to rent the equipment!

I live nearly a mile high and I’ve already had one skin cancer to deal with. And there’s always wind and dust that gets into everything, like clocks and motors. But here’s the key: This is my land. I am attached to it. Part of my identity is in where I live. To leave the desert, to leave my children who live near me, would be to leave part of me. I suspect that most Americans have much the same kind of attachment to place. If my place presents dangers it is part of my loyalty to my place to mitigate those dangers as best I can and, in the end, to love my place anyway.

deltaflute
deltaflute
Saturday, May 25, AD 2013 10:18am

In Mississippi we have clay that shifts when it rains ( which is often). Your basement would crack like my parents foundation or walls. Other parts are like Louisiana where the water table is so high that you spend more time bailing water than digging. Im not familiar with other geographical areas but its not just a cultural thing because basements are nice to have when its hot.

Don the Kiwi
Saturday, May 25, AD 2013 10:18pm

Yikes!!!
Sounds like some of you want to move out of where you are. 😉
Born and settled here in the North Island of NZ with my own little patch of paradise, about 100 ft. above sea level with the Tauranga harbour half a mile away ( great view, facing north)
Haven’t had a decent tsunami here for about 7,000 years.
Haven’t had a major volcanic eruption here for – umm – wait a minute – Mt. Tarawera 50 miles away erupted in 1886, spreading around 5 ft. of ash here, but its compacted down to about 15 inches – always visible when excavating house foundations.
Haven’t had a decent earthquake here – ever. Oooo! – but had a biggie in Napier in 1932 – flattened the whole area. But that’s 200 miles away. And Christchurch had a biggie 3 years ago and flattened most of the central city – but that’s 600 miles away in the South Island. All we get here every year or two is a gentle waving rocking 🙂
Our tornadoes are just little whirlwinds hardly enough to lift the roof of your garden shed.
But seriously, as another commenter said, anywhere you go, there’s going to be forces of nature that we can’t control. Its a matter of managing the situation where you are, and taking the necessary precautions – building codes for building, Geotechnical care for choosing building sites, climatic conditions – just manage it and handle it if you’re where you want to be.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, May 26, AD 2013 9:06am

and taking the necessary precautions – building codes for building, Geotechnical care for choosing building sites, climatic conditions – just manage it and handle it if you’re where you want to be.

It is important as a matter of policy that underwriters be permitted to act on what their actuaries tell them and proceed without public subsidies. And insist people pay for their water and electricity at cost.

In this county, you have a sample of just about every sort of climate and biome this world has to offer (bar tropical rainforest). The most demographically dynamic areas in recent decades have been Las Vegas and Phoenix, both smack in the middle of unattractive swatches of desert. There is just no accounting for taste. The Aussies have the sense to leave their desert empty as God intended.

exNOAAman
exNOAAman
Sunday, May 26, AD 2013 7:20pm

Elaine Krewer says:
Sunday, May 26, 2013 A.D. at 7:30am

One particularly irritating aspect of the news coverage of the Moore tornado, IMO, was the manner in which many reporters rushed to declare it one of the worst, or even THE worst, tornadoes in U.S. history.

==============================
Oh, how right you are. See here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/26/claim-400-ppm-co2-gives-the-weather-personality/

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Wednesday, May 29, AD 2013 11:25am

A basement is an expensive element. It will be omitted from a construction budget if money is tight. There are other ways to protect a structure from frost damage, as well. To build a storm shelter is an option but it’s all a matter of risk management. From place to place there are varying percentages of risk from a menu of hazards. Building codes mandate design resistive to some of them but don’t go so far as to require storm shelters. Building codes are becoming overly intrusive on matters previously those of choice and individual judgment. We live where we are fed. We have no permanent house here but long for one of many mansions promised on high. Here, build the house on solid ground but remember that unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.

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