The Atlantic had a piece about how hard it is to actually build and maintain them there.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ar…

It's not always politics.

1), meaning only one thing: expensive. But also in the CNN report:

"Hancock cited the area's high groundwater levels and heavy clay as among the reasons some people believe -- wrongly, he said -- that basements are tough to construct.

But improved waterproofing methods can obviate the first; and the second, too, is surmountable, according to Hancock, who said he has built more than 600 basements in the Oklahoma City area over the past 15 years."

Does this mean Charles thinks everyone in Oklahoma should live in a 300 square foot apartment...with a basement?

Well if a man whose livelihood depends on people building basements says it's totally practical and affordable to build a basement, I'm convinced.

All they need are bibles. Not basements. Bibles! Everybody knows a bible will keep you safe.

Lots of older houses in rural areas have root cellars that are used. Our neighbor had a Cold War bomb shelter and we used that. But newer burbs don't have enough acreage to justify a root cellar, and the probability of a direct hit from a tornado is actually extremely small. One object can be completely destroyed while another a few feet away is unscathed.

I could agree with that to a point; for tornados in lot's of places but the tornados Ive been around are dust devils compared to mile wide, 200+ mph, on the ground over 30 minutes monsters these folks are experiencing. Reguarly experiencing at that.

But then most of us live in sight of an active volcano so what do we know?

Good Morning Charles,
Yeah, I too was surprised by that but I don't think it has anything to do with politics or that Oklahoma is largely a GOP state for that matter. It might have to do with topography. I just don't know.

On the other hand, you're correct tornadoes like hurricanes aren't politcal. However, the AFTERMATH can be. Recall Hurricane Katrina.

@ 6, also, most suburbanites wouldn't know what to do with a root cellar. Ya just buy yer canned veggies at the Super Walmart, and the AC will keep the house from getting too hot and causin' the cans to burst.

That said, I think sprawl in places where sprawl can happen does increase the chances of tornadoes destroying many homes. Sure, most tornadoes are small, but in Oklahoma they can be two miles wide. I don't think it's only chance that this hit a place that was recently farmland.

I doubt most of those folks have $30,000 stashed away to pay for it. That's a little like asking residents of a trailer park "How come you don't live in three-bedroom house with a yard?"

The solution used to be public shelters at schools. But of course there are no neighborhood schools and kids are bused miles. So getting to the nearest shelter would be impractical. That and they won't even put shelters in the god damned schools anymore.

Charles, we can't even convince the moron hipsters of left-leaning Portland into simple collectivist prophylactic measures like putting fluoride in the drinking water how they hell are you going to convince the ultra-morons of tea party Jesus Land to implement regulations and tax levies for building storm shelters?

We'll see how many of our houses crumble when an 'F5' earthquake hits.

Everything Americans do is out of knee-jerk reactive emotional outburst.

The county Moore is located in is considering regulations that everyone must have a storm shelter... AFTER the tornado destroyed the town.

People want to pass gun regulations... AFTER mass murders happen.

People want restrictions on what you can bring on airlines... AFTER terrorists use them.

This whole country lives and breathes after-the-fact fixing instead of an ounce of prevention. This country (especially conservatives) love, LOVE, to buy things when they are at their most expensive. Fuck prevention, they want overpriced emergency band aids instead.

@1, You don't need to build an entire basement for every house. All you need is a small underground shelter that will fit a small family. Those cost $3,000-$5,000 fully installed and less if you're willing to do some work yourself.
Even that amount can be prohibitive unless you just add it to the cost of the house at the time of purchase and finance it all together. That's why so many safety and environmental features are in the building codes of more progressive areas, as too many people will roll the dice if given the option.

@14: for example: http://www.fiberglasscreations.com/shelt…

In an article published in The New York Times on Monday, an Oklahoman builder explains why shelters like those offered by the proprietor linked above are not as common:

About a year and a half ago, Mr. McCarty, the builder, spoke to a group of Oklahoma legislators who were considering mandating shelters for new homes, he recalled. But no legislation was proposed, he said, because of the bad economy. A small, prefabricated sunken shelter can cost $4,000, he said, and “mandating another three or four thousand dollars on every new home can really add up when you’re trying to keep houses affordable.”

Houses in Oklahoma, Mr. McCarty said, are usually built on slabs without basements or crawl spaces because the land is flat and the weather is temperate enough that digging a deep foundation is not necessary, as it is with homes built in the Northeast, where the temperatures regularly dip below freezing.

“When you look at the flat land, and the amount it would cost to excavate and remove the dirt, the cost of the foundation to build a basement just adds a substantial amount to the cost of a new home,” Mr. McCarty said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/us/she…

I grew up in OKC (with a basement, because our house was built in the early 1900's on top of a hill where it's easier to lay solid foundation), and yes, the issue is that it's expensive and difficult to get a solid foundation out of the clay underneath. Doable, sure, but adding 5k to a home that costs 60-80k to purchase is a tough sell and retrofitting a basement onto a house made without one is even harder. Not saying they don't need regulation to mandate storm shelters, as that would probably have saved some lives, but come the fuck on. The fact that a contractor who builds basements says it's easy is advertising for his business (which he'd be stupid not to do), but to somehow blame this on some political bullshit is ridiculous. Will new houses have basements? God I hope so, but even if they don't to say that all of those people's lives were destroyed because they voted for Romney is sick.

http://globalcomment.com/on-oklahoma-and…

(And before we get into it, I consider myself a liberal progressive and moved to get away from the political climate. I just don't want to play the post-tragedy blame game right now)

During my visit to Moore last spring, I noticed that most of the garages in my host's newish neighborhood had those little steel shelters in the slab. I assumed that was a building code requirement, but was informed that it wasn't. I was momentarily shocked, but then I remembered that this was a state that elected morons like Inhofe.
What's more shocking is that the insurance & construction industries haven't bribed the state senate to mandate these shelters. That 5k bump in the building cost is pretty small compared to the 100k+ life insurance payouts.

@14 - Or if some kind of public or shared facility were available. Like, maybe a neighborhood could come together in some kind of co-unity unit, or "community" and fund the construction of a storm shelter for their block. Never mind. It's a crazy idea.

@12: IF one hits.

given the stringent lateral bracing required BY CODE and ORDINANCE to prevent collapse of new structures, my guess is not many will collapse catastrophically. my old bungalow rental in Wallingford, made of wood with no holddowns or plywood sheathing, just laughed at the Nisqually earthquake.

false equivalence.

Back home foundations must be 4 ft deep to prevent frost heave...because the ground freezes solid down to 4 feet. So every permanent building has a basement of some sort. All trailer parks- about the only things without basements, have community shelters for tornadoes. It's just part of the deal with living in the midwest. Oklahoma is pretty retrograde in terms of building codes. Nothing is gonna save a building from an EF-5, but even the simplest shelter can be very effective in protecting life.

I was thinking of this in terms of our own codes for earthquakes- Quakes do not have a simple method for protecting oneself, but there are some simple mechanical fixes that can help a building survive small/moderate earthquakes, and buy time for people in large quakes. Engineering can make a huge difference - The Auckland NZ quake was the same size as the Haiti quake.

The solution is public emergency shelters. That avoids requiring expensive regulations that might make modest homes uneconomical to build (for an event that is actually quite rare), while actually giving people options when a disaster does occur.

If Oklahoma won't do it themselves, we should pass a federal requirement for shelters like this and commit to paying for their construction and maintenance.

I bet if they'd voted for Obama, they'd all have basements by now.

@12: "F5 earthquake"? Nice troll, 6/10.

There's a lot of misinformed blame-the-victim schedenfreude going on at SLOG about the tornado. It's ugly, but self righteousness knows no political party.

The tornado that hit Moore was a F4 - rare and powerful. A direct hit from a F5 - like the 1999 one that clobbered the same Moore neighborhoods as this one did - is pretty much 100% likely to kill you whether you're in an underground shelter or not. The drop in pressure at the center of the vortex is enough to boil your blood in your veins, explode tree branches from within, etc.

That said, most tornados are relatively small andyou have a chance of survival if you take shelter in an inside hall or closet. A shelter is better, of course, but several of the children who died at the Plaza school WERE in the basement. When the cinderblock building collapsed they were trapped under rubble. They died from drowning when the basement flooded. Immediately following a tornado comes torrential rain. The tornado is always on the leading edge of a thunderstorm.

@25 -no, not really. You blood won't boil, and you stand a perfectly reasonable chance of surviving, even an EF-5, in a relatively simple shelter. Having tons of cinderblocks above you and no sump pump is a failure of forethought, if this basement was intended as a shelter. Probably a better chance of surviving there than just hanging out in the open, but still, a bad deal.

Tornadoes are one of those things you can't do much about. if you live where they are common you have to be at least a little bit prepared. I've had to shelter a couple dozen times in my life, and once my family was caught out on a highway between 2 relatively small tornadoes and had to shelter in a culvert when it became clear the car was not going to be safe.

Not only are there no zoning requirements for storm cellars in homes or for access to storm shelters in apartment buildings, trailer parks, and workplaces - there aren't even any storm shelters in many of the schools, and none are required.

Think about that: you have an organization accepting custody of your children, and it's not required to be prepared for a known considerable risk of natural disasters. And even after the tragedy in Moore (9 kids dead in schools, was it?), the effort in the legislature to mandate shelters in schools and to provide state matching funds for shelter construction in schools, workplaces, and homes is decidedly an uphill struggle.

There is a lot of mis-information. The LT Governor was incorrect in his statement. The kids at Plaza died when a brick wall collapsed, not by drowning, there was no basement.

The event has been reclassified as an EF5. The EF scale uses multiple indicators, clocked wind speed only being one variable, to determine the strength of the storm . Once wind speed goes over 200 MPH the damage can be at the same as if the speed was 250MPH.

The low pressure engine that drives tornadoes is only about 100 mb from the outside pressure. The lowest pressures recorded during tornado events were around 850 mb. For comparison Denver averages around 835 mb. I think it's safe to say the pressure is not low enough to suffocate, let alone have your blood boil or a bunch of people in Colorado are in danger of exploding.

Death and injury from tornadoes come from the kinetic energy. Protection from that kinetic energy, i.e. in an underground structure would make it survivable.

Well here's another fun fact to chew on—no one in California has earthquake insurance. Like tornadoes, it's high-risk, low probability, and doesn't justify the cost (it's actually more complicated than that when you get into the 1-time walkaway allowance and sky-high deductibles that negate the practicality of it, but just the same...). My comparison falls apart a little when you mention building codes, but I'm throwing it out there anyhow.

Come to think of it, all Seattleites should probably carry earthquake insurance as well. The catch-22 is, if the actuaries thought it was remotely likely, you would wouldn't be able to afford it either... but when it happens, everyone in America's gonna be all DUH, WTF is wrong with them?!

Oddly, standard coverage—as of recently—does cover terrorist attacks, which I guess brings this full circle back to your political argument.

I love all the hand-wringing about shelters, when we all know perfectly well that shoddy, just-barely-good-enough-for-now is what made America great. It's no different than those waterfront homes in Florida that get flattened by hurricanes every few years, and then rebuilt with the contractors deliberately leaving out the rebar, or two of every three roofing nails, to save a buck. All these Oklahoma houses are going to be rebuilt cheaper than they were before, and some people are going to get rich on it, and in five or ten years the same thing will happen again -- only worse, because there'll be even more houses there. It's the American Way.

Fnarf, you're getting close to tinfoil hat territory with the contractors "deliberately" leaving out yada yada. Most often, it's not being cheap or intentional, but a lack of skill, supervision, and inspection. That's why we have a building code and building inspectors and why you should never hire someone who wants to do work without a permit.

@ 13, stealing was probably legal before the first theft was committed.

If god meant Oakies to have basements, he'd have given them shovels.

Insurance sector development is very important for the society. People mostly prefer to invest money in the insurance sector as it is providing many facilities for a good life and also healthy life. This sector also consist many agencies and many agents also brokers are there. It will be better for you if you will verify before going for any insurance. Basically people prefer the health care insurance which help them to be helpful while suffering from any injuries. This blog contains details information about the insurance which are applicable for the health.
Auto Insurance San Dimas

Insurance sector development is very important for the society. People mostly prefer to invest money in the insurance sector as it is providing many facilities for a good life and also healthy life. This sector also consist many agencies and many agents also brokers are there. It will be better for you if you will verify before going for any insurance. Basically people prefer the health care insurance which help them to be helpful while suffering from any injuries. This blog contains details information about the insurance which are applicable for the health.
Auto Insurance San Dimas