Data compiled by the Insurance Information Institute found that the years between 2008 and 2013 represented the five highest years of insured losses due to tornadoes in U.S. history.
A 2013 report by U.K. insurance firm Lloyd’s of London concluded that the atmospheric phenomena known as El Nino and La Nina contributed to increased tornado activity in those years and beyond. The report, however, did not directly correlate climate change and recent tornado intensity.
Without notice, there’s little you as a homeowner can do to prevent damage if a tornado is headed your way.
However, if you’re in an area that is prone to tornadoes, there are several upgrades and precautionary measures that you take to make your home as tornado-resistant as possible.
Here are a few tips:
Safe Room
Moore, Oklahoma, was hit with one of the most devastating tornadoes ever recorded in May 2013. It caused nearly $2 billion in damages and cost 24 people their lives.
Oklahoma is part of “tornado alley,” but Mike Hancock, of Edmond-based Basement Contractors, told CNN that less than 1 percent of homes in Moore have basements. Additionally, less than 3 percent of homes in Oklahoma City have them.
High water tables, shallow freeze lines, and the subsequent high costs to build them are the main reasons most Oklahoma homes lack basements.
A safe room built to FEMA specifications can be retrofitted in any home for about $6,000. The agency provides detailed blueprints to fortify one room in any home with steel-reinforced cinder blocks and other safeguards pursuant to International Code Council (ICC) 500 standards. It’s best to build your safe room in a garage or large closet big enough for your whole family to fit in, along with pets and valuables.
Proper anchoring and material manipulation are essential to building safe rooms, so it’s not an ideal DIY venture. As with any home improvement project, get at least three quotes from contractors to get the best price and terms.
Cable-Tite System
Roofing companies today offer several features with their products, such as six-nail fastening systems and lifetime warranties on shingles to help mitigate wind and storm damage costs. But the bottom line remains unchanged; once the roof comes off your home, there’s no saving the rest of it.
Randy Shackelford, an engineer with structural systems firm Simpson Strong-Tie, told Popular Mechanics that the minimum home building standards required by International Residential Code are inadequate. He recommends continuous load paths, chains, or cables that tie down the entire structure to the foundation are the first steps to making homes wind-resistant.
Cable-Tite is one such solution. It’s a system of cables running through a home’s walls that connect (tie-down) the roof to the foundation. The cables keep the roof from being ripped off by high winds, even if it somehow detaches.
Small Fixes
Shutters are ideal for covering windows when tornados strike. Homes that don’t have them can utilize PlyLox Window Clips and pre-cut plywood boards to cover all windows in a matter of 20 minutes.
Homes with connected garages should also reinforce the door with braces—once the door comes off the garage, consider the whole house destroyed due to the air pressure.
There is no real way to tornado-proof a home, but these fixes will help keep your family safe and minimize damage, along with acquiring the necessary skills to survive one.
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Roarke:
I read your blog everyday and greatly enjoy everyone’s comments. However, I have a concern about your site’s security. I keep getting messages that your site’s security certicate is not from a trusted source. Can you or anyone help me with my concern?
Cherie,Thanks for the great inf. re Tornadoes.We never used to get tornadoes here in NY state but we do now. Climate change has a lot to do with it here . Arlene
Ol’Farm Boy- we have never received a message like that.
If you want to build a tornado resistant dwelling on the cheap, my best advice would be to build a concrete geodesic dome. It will survive anything up to an earthquake or a nuclear blast (not direct of course). You can also spray shotcrete over a conventional dome to reinforce it.
If you want to spend a little more and go one better, put up a monolithic dome: It’s a balloon shell, inflated by a fan and then sprayed with a plastic foam, followed by metal hooks to hang a spiral of re-bar; then sprayed from within – with several inches of shotcrete. It doesn’t get more disaster resistance than that. Add a rocket mass heater and it will be incredibly economical to heat.
lol, Hi Al… what a great sharing! Did you attend the same Buckminster Fuller earth fair in 1967 with a couple classmates and myself? Been a while since I seen a “geodesic” dome post “out of the blue”. Good add to the converse.
I grew up on farm in NE Iowa with many extended families across state, we mostly had storm cellars from 1800’s, and which were rapidly upgraded in 20th century, but mostly after WWII. And I have several friends/family in Moore and 15-20 miles SE of OKC. I was stationed at Tinker AFB for 2.5 years and often talked with people about protection. As mentioned above, water table seems to be substantial problem…hence no basements, but I could never get meaningful reason why more storm cellars are not built, don’t have to dig terribly deep but Brick, cinder-block, concrete (all reinforced), secure hatchings – not cost prohibitive.
I spent Jr. High & High School in Evanston IL working in Municipal Forestry, in summer ’72 (August) North side Chicago up thru northern suburbs got slammed with 26 tornadoes and various micro-bursts up to Zion State Park which his about 10 miles from WI. border. We spent 3 weeks along with partnering Tree services clearing 6 square block areas boxed in because of all trees down criss-crossing the streets, and pulling tree-tops
out of peoples bedrooms, kitchens and living-rooms. Guess my best conclusion to ADD here is: WHATEVER YOUR GEOGRAPHIC LOCALE IS, KNOW YOUR AREA FOR ALL ITS BENEFITS AND ITS DANGERS – INTIMATELY CONSTANTLY REWORK RESEARCH AND HENCE YOUR SHTF PLANS AND WE MUST ALL BE DILIGENT ENOUGH TO REVIEW PLANS IN LIGHT OF GEOGRAPHY, WEATHER, SOCIO IMPACTS, AND OUR LIMITATIONS IF ANY AFFECTING ABILITY TO MAINTAIN SUSTENANCE…AND REVISE OUR PLANS ACCORDINGLY.
AND CHECKING IN HERE AT modernsurvivalonline.com Thanks to everyone here, great comments.
Tornadoes are strange things My grandparents were eating dinner when the front door blew open and my grandfather shut it and then all the windows in the house blew out but no other damage. Another hit their farm and lifted a full grainery rotated it and set it down but left a rickety garage next to it untouched. Another hit my uncles farm and passed between the house and barn touching neither one but plowed a line through a grove of trees behind the house. Even in Oregon I looked out at a field and saw a 50 ft wide dust devil cross the field. In Arizona I have seen two at the same time like giant black pillars of dust out on the desert Never expect such things there. They go where they want to when they want to.
I love new siding my cedar ridge which is very wind resistant i think could stand the test too. I liked this blog and I appreciate what you said. Has anybody else heard of cedar ridge siding? There are only a few people who sell this specific siding ad i got mine from conservation construction. Great read. keep it up.