Please, Oklahoma - from now on require underground shelters at schools

[ZRT2209]

they had nowhere to go to be safe

[PADemD]

1. I don't understand

why there isn't an underground shelter on every block. Wouldn't it be more cost effective to build one large shelter than one for every house on the block?

[ZRT2209]

3. yes, in that part of the country, there should be a shelter on every block

[uppityperson]

2. 7 kids drowned in the school's basement. But I agree, they need to have some sort of safe place

to go that won't have debris blown into it, blown onto them, or drown.

[beleiver]

29. basement

News just said the school did NOT have a basement and were hiding in hallways! I know they are just reporting as it comes to them, but I wish we knew the actual facts...

[hrmjustin]

39. Welcome to DU my friend!

[postulater]

4. But that would mean regulations

and regulations mean big gubmint.

And big gubmint wants to take their guns.

So no shelters.

[Lex]

5. You must be a tax and spend liberal---that sounds like liberal tax money to me. nt

[grasswire]

6. the smallest of the children were sent to the basement

....and they drowned there. So says the Weather Channel.

Horrific.

[Zoeisright]

7. Then there was something wrong with the design.

Our basements up north all have drainage systems that prevent flooding to that extent.

[X_Digger]

8. No power for sump pumps in a storm like this.

Unless you live on a hill, a flooded basement below the level of city sewers isn't going to magically drain itself.

[DCKit]

10. Thankfully, there's a new invention called "batteries".

They've got no excuse. Moore was in the news not so long ago for a previous, horrific tornado, yet they did nothing to protect their kids.

[X_Digger]

13. Those must be some magic batteries..

Pumps draw an incredible amount of current, and a UPS large enough to do so would be it's own hazard in a flooded basement (you know, because the fucking roof is gone.)

*sigh*

So because they didn't have these magic batteries, they 'did nothing to protect their kids'?

[DCKit]

14. Incredible amount of current to pump out a basement?

Piss off. Pumps are some of the most efficient uses of electricity ever.

Besides, how much is too much to spend to keep your children safe?

It was a tornado, not a tsunami.

[X_Digger]

15. Lol, go buy an electric water pump capable of pumping out a basement and come back and chat

I'm sitting within 50 feet (in a finished basement) of a sewage ejection pump that pulls 3a, with a 6a spike on start-up.

It still doesn't have the volume per hour to keep this basement water-free if the rest of the house were torn off in a torrential downpour.

*smh*

[DCKit]

16. My VitaMix draws fifteen amps...

The vacuum cleaners draw ten, but we never had an issue running them in the solar house we owned for thirteen years.

The battery bank consisted of sixteen deep-cycle golf-cart batteries.

Had our batteries remained charged and maintained at all times, they could have run that 3 amp pump for about seventy days.

As I said, piss off.

[SoCalDem]

20. Below ground shelters need not be a traditional "basement"

They are not that complicated, and they surely save lives.

I am from Kansas, so I know a bit about tornadoes.. Our house was hit in 1968 .. (3 came thru between 1 AM to 3 AM)

You go below ground and you wait.. even if it's hot & sticky & there are spiders & bugs..or if it's a muddy dirt floor and there are no lights..and the kids are crying & the cat is yowling & the dog is whining & panting like a maniac..


if you value life, you have a BELOW ground shelter or some kind..


Maybe you'll never use it, and it just sits there "mocking you" for "wasting" that money
simple:





interesting




modern




variations

[MineralMan]

25. Actually, no. My basement's sump pump is plugged into

a UPS. It's perfectly adequate for the typical power outage we have here in Minnesota, and it's worked a few times. For longer power outages, I have a 3500W generator in my garage. It gets used more to power tools than to power household stuff. I don't get it out unless the power outage is predicted to last more than four hours. Then, the sump pump and the houses furnace get hooked up to it.

Battery backup for sump pumps is very common here in MN.

[malaise]

23. Tut Tut

It's all in gawd's hands - didn't you hear that man say so??

[Logical]

27. You are correct! But no one listening today! n-t

[Llewlladdwr]

9. Sometimes I hate yankees...

They often assume everyone should do things just as they do, whether such is even physically possible or not.

[krispos42]

33. Might have been broken pipes causing the flooding.

If the water main broke when a wall collapsed or something, it might have filled up very quickly.



It's also not outside the realm of possibility that the severe winds blew water back through the sewer pipes or something.



Dammit.

[cui bono]

11. Yeah, my neighbor is from there and has family near Tulsa...

she told me they don't require underground shelters for homes. I was dumbfounded. Why would that not be a building code requirement for that area? I'm still shocked.

And for schools, definitely. I was wondering though, why schools were open today. I wasn't following it but I saw headlines about tornadoes coming to OK, but now that I know they don't necessarily have shelters at home, I guess you might as well go to work or school.

[ZRT2209]

17. yes, it seems like weather analysts were warning at least a day in advance

just cancel school under those circumstances

[Thinkingabout]

34. And the kids would have been in the homes which was destroyed, what then. Ones needs to understand

the earth in the area. There also has to be funds spent on building and installing storm shelters. On the generators, where do you think the vehicles went, 18 wheelers was thrown around like hot wheels. This was not an puff of wind.

[jakeXT]

19. Why aren’t there basements in Oklahoma?

Why aren’t there basements in Oklahoma?

It’s because of the soil. Some of it is really clay-like, which gets wet and causes basement flooding. The rest of it has bedrock, which can be very expensive to chip away at, if not impossible. If you want a basement, you might need to use explosives to clear the bedrock.

Nationally, only 31 percent of newly constructed homes have basements, according to the National Association of Home Builders. In Minnesota, it’s closer to 81 percent.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/05/20/good-question-reply-all-the-oklahoma-tornado/

[SoCalDem]

22. Developers want to build the biggest/cheapest house, as fast a possible

they develop,sell & move on.. There is no personal connection to any of the people who will live in those homes.

Look at older farming communities where people built their own homes with help from family friends.. They HAD storm/root/cellars and or basements.

Sure it took time, and effort, but their basements were not for the pool table, bar, entertainment areas.. they were for furnaces, pipes, storage. & safety

[joeglow3]

30. And people want houses they can afford to buy

Lets be honest, if people wanted them, they would be provided.

[SoCalDem]

35. It's a gamble. some lose the bets n/t

[joeglow3]

37. Agreed

We live in Nebraska and have always had basements. A friend of mine was looking at houses and found a HUGE one that was pretty cheap. When he was touring it, he asked where the basement stairs were and they said they had no basement. He laughed and walked out.

Sadly, this neighborhood has no basements and idiots are flooding to move in because it looks like they have a HUGE house to impress people with.

[LuvNewcastle]

38. That's probably the biggest reason why people don't

have basements in a lot of places. Developers build subdivisions of ranch style shitboxes and sell them to people at affordable prices. Builders use cheap materials and slap those places up in no time. They're basically pre-fab houses sitting on one-eighth acre lots. Basements and other considerations don't fit into the equation.

In about 10-15 years the houses will deteriorate, the neighborhood will go to shit, and it will be time for the owners to sell out and move to another subdivision much like the one they just left.

[Thinkingabout]

36. The earth in this area is not favorable to installing basements. In some areas the water tables

does not allow for basements, they have red soil in this area and you have limestone to dig through. It is not always easy to place basements under every home.

[PADemD]

24. you might as well go to work or school

or leave town

[cynatnite]

12. I went to school in Moore and attended both Plaza Towers and Kelley Elementary...

When they built Kelley Elementary way back then, they built it to withstand tornado strength winds. We had our tornado drills in the hallway. It was specially designed to withstand a lot of power. I remember how it was talked about back then.

What it was not designed for was a direct impact of a major tornado which is what hit the school back in 1999. No building could have stood against that.

You are talking thousands of schools across tornado alley which stretches across several states. Tornados have hit in areas that are not in this area of the country.

This is hugely expensive and the costs verses the risk must be weighed. It's not as simple of a question as it sounds. What we need are better warning systems. We need to improve our ability to detect and to predict tornados in order to give people more time to escape.

Money should be spent on this science.

Hindsight is 20/20.

[joeglow3]

31. People will NEVER be happy

I agree with what you said. However, just a couple days ago, we had people here complaining about spotters going out into storms.

[cynatnite]

32. Spotters have saved a lot of lives by what they do...

Eyes on the ground has made a huge difference. Radars only tell so much.

I think much of it is a lack of understanding of these storms. I grew up around them most of my life.

[Politicalboi]

18. I read about a good idea

Bury shipping containers for the schools, or have them in neighborhoods too. 2 or 3 of those together could hold a lot of people, and if they are welded together, they become heavier.

[SoCalDem]

21. If they are below ground, yes..

above ground, just another flying projectile in a 200+ mph vortex of debris..

[rdking647]

26. in a lot of cases its not really possible to build an underground shelter in these area

between the watter table and the type of soil the shelters literaly get spit out of the ground (at least thats my understanding)

[Logical]

28. It is a pure odds decision, spend $50,000 for each 100s of schools....

For a million to one chance for a tornado hitting the school ever.

Or spend the money else where for teachers, etc.