FOX CABLE NEWS IS REPORTING 24 3RD GRADERS HAVE PERISHED IN OKLAHOMA.

FOX NEWS ^ | 5/20/2013 | Fox News

[Netz]

Sad. I still believe that an underground facility MAY have helped. We used to go down to the bomb shelters in our school. Of course that was the Cold War, “Soviets are going to bomb us” era.
Maybe a “hardened: room or hallway just isn’t enough. For generations folks went underground and maybe that is what we need once again? Prayers go out...

[GeronL]

That place got smacked like this 14 years ago too.

I think they might go for the underground shelters after this

[eastforker]

Everybody keeps talking about an underground bunker. It is just as easy and would cost no more than to build an above ground shelter that a storm like this could not touch. It really isn’t that hard to do.

[al_c]

Reason #327,451 to homeschool.

Did you see what was left of many, many homes? Foundations and debris. I cringe at the thought of people being in these homes when this monster hit.

[Netz]

Where would you “feel” safer? Under the ground or above it when this kind of thing hits? Man's nature is to dig down to seek shelter or digs a “foxhole” or “hunkers down”, lays low, “hugs the Earth”, etc. No man made structure, at a reasonable cost protects man better than the Earth herself therefore...dig.

[GeronL]

Obviously above ground shelters are close to worthless when “this kind of thing” runs over you.

[eastforker]

BS. Iron and concrete would make a bunker no tornado could penetrate.

[GeronL]

Just hardening an existing room in a school or house won’t cut it though

[eastforker]

Yes, it can be.Not that hard to do.

[GeronL]

Concrete dome homes could see their day?

[eastforker]

Don’t need a dome home. 12 inch I beams, 1/4 inch plate, it can be done.

[Venturer]

That was the storm I was referring to Joe.
My daughters home in Hughesville was hit hard.

[central_va]

As a civil engineer I designed an oil refinery control room designed to withstand a blast shock wave MUCH greater than a the over pressurization of an F5. One room in each school should be built like a bank vault. It can do other things but that is the hurricane “safe” room.

[GeronL]

Might need more than one room though

[rlmorel]

IIRC, the Johnstown Flood was less an issue with the terrible side of nature (heavy rainfall, for some time, but not biblical in intensity) and more an issue with a poorly made earthen dam.

THAT was one scary event. I read the book, and the guy who was in the train heading into town at full speed ahead of the flood while blowing his whistle is just hair raising to consider.

This tornado was a freak of nature, as ones that size and strength are.

[equaviator]

It’s much worse than I thought. I heard one reporter describing how the super cell “came out of the heavens”.

[Netz]

Yes but why don't we see many above-ground, reinforced steel & concrete tornado shelters? Cost? Less safe? Not sure. What do you think? Why is your concept not applied in the fields of Oklahoma? I saw pictures of survivors emerging from classic, two-door underground shelters...the kind that Dorthy ran to in the Wizard of Oz...

[Smokin' Joe]

Some of my relatives were north of Rte 6 in town and escaped serious damage to their homes. When I saw pics of what was left of my grandparents' home, I was thankful they had passed on after long lives. (God does work in mysterious ways.) I could not imagine them in their last years surviving that.

I'm sorry to hear that your daughter's home was in the path of that one, and I pray they have recovered.

[matginzac]

Probably didn’t but I know how frightened they must have been...
We had a similar drill with our third graders at school where we would go to a lower hallway to duck and cover...
It’s all too easy for me to imagine what happened...horrible.

[matginzac]

It’s the next morning and it appears they know now how they drowned...
Horrific...