Worste Tornado Disaster in the US

[shadowkat]

The news just reported that yesterday was the worst tornado disaster in decades to hit the US. They ripped across 6 states across the South(Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina amongst them). 164 tornados in less than 24 hours, 263 deaths, at least half million without power in the state of Alabama.
One tore a path over a 100 miles long. Whole neighborhoods demolished. State of Alabama was the hardest hit. This is the greatest number of tornadoes and the worst we've seen in decades.
Flattened towns.

Go here: http://www.josic.com/tornadoes-tear-through584-the-south-killing-245

The tornado that hit Tuscaloosa was reportedly a mile or more wide, and took out power to over 50,000 homes. Governor Robert Bentley has pledged the full resources of the state including use of the Alabama National guard. Tuscaloosa currently remains under weather watch.

http://youtu.be/hMWiBTx1kIs

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about graduation being cancelled. I wondered.
When asked why all these horrible storms now? The weatherpeople stated that it really isn't as odd as it looks - we've always had horrible tornados, it's just that in the 1970s and 80's there was less surburban sprawl. People lived closer to the cities and the areas the tornadoes frequented were unoccupied farm land. Now that farm land and open fields has developments.
This happened in Kansas as well. Also, none of these homes had basements or root cellars (which is odd) - is that true???

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Probably no root cellars. I don't know of anywhere that would have those. But there would be basements, but generally in larger houses. So basements would be random. In Tuscaloosa, a lot of the houses that were hit were the old houses near the university which are largely rented (frequently to students) and thus are small and only kept with minimal investment. And as it crossed McFarland, it was entereing some poor neighborhoods. It hit some wealthier neighborhoods near the lake as well, but the area shown on television has tended toward off campus student housing and some of the more poor areas. Then it headed into the decidedly rural areas between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. In Birmingham proper the worst area is a poor area (sadly, isn't that always the case?) I drove through Cahaba Heights this weekend, but it was the EF 3 tornado the day before, the big ones there. It was mostly these hundred year old trees that had crashed down on small rental houses (though I noticed that it had done damage to Mountain Brook Community Church).

The other two areas that were slamed were basically fairly rural kinda-suburbs (meaning that they're about a half hour to an hour to the northern outskirts of town. They're pretty obliterated and would've had a bunch of different building types. Some would have basements.

Generally speaking, smaller homes in the area just don't have basements. They're largely slab on grade (my own for example. Plus the watertable is pretty high). Those like my sister's house that are in the hills tend to have basements.

It's just a really random thing regarding basements or not, mostly based on topography.

Last year they passed a rule that all new schools have to have tornado shelters, so we're having to design them into new schools now. Right now we're the only state in the country requiring this, but it's not required for existing schools.