Posted on 05/20/2003 7:31:42 AM PDT by CFW
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:09:52 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
'Dust devil' storm believed responsible for building collapse in Maine; shop owner killed By Associated Press, 5/20/2003 10:02 LEBANON, Maine (AP) A freak burst of wind on a clear day apparently caused an auto body shop to collapse, killing the owner, officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
As a kid, I once had a dust devil knock me down. It seemed to be no more than 50' or 100' high, but packed a big wallop.
Usually dust devils are strong enough to kick up dirt and teach kids all about tornados and tornado chasing. Most of us out-grow the desire to chase tornados after a close encounter. Dust devils are still fun.
Buildings with a long unsupported rafter span, especially relatively light steel-skin industrial buildings, have sufficient strength to resist the downward pull of gravity and horizontal forces, but are very vulnerable to lifting force. If a high wind of any kind can get under the roof and lift the structure, there is virtually no resistance to the upward pull. When the roof lifts off, the walls collapse.
This same thing happened to our family church in Alabama. It was very old, built in 1832, old-fashioned pegged timber-frame construction, all heart pine. It did have a very long unsupported rafter span. During a big thunderstorm a downburst or tornado got in at one gable end and the roof went airborne. It wound up about 100 yards down the hill in the middle of Mr. Smith's cow pasture. The walls all just fell inward like a house of cards. Fortunately it happened late on a Friday night when nobody was around (except Mr. Smith's cows, but none of them were hit. He found them in the morning standing in a semicircle around the roof and wondering how it got there.)
Fortunately we were able to salvage almost all the materials (there was surprisingly little damage other than to the roof) and rebuilt it on a smaller scale than the original. It looks a bit truncated, but it's still there.
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