Houses in tornado/hurricane areas

[MCMLXXXII]

Why do people in the US built wooden houses in areas which are known to be hit often by tornadoes or hurricanes? Is there a shortage in concrete or bricks?

[Sorensen]

Why do people in the US built wooden houses in areas which are known to be hit often by tornadoes or hurricanes? Is there a shortage in concrete or bricks?

Wood is abundant, also getting hit by a brick at over 100 mph is way worse than wood.

Basically it's a way better building material even with natural disasters.

[Nellise]

Why do people in the US built wooden houses in areas which are known to be hit often by tornadoes or hurricanes? Is there a shortage in concrete or bricks?

Either material can be just as good, brick or wood, it depends on the how it was built. A lot of it depends on if the roof stays on. But for the most severe tornados, like f4 or especially f5 (300mph/482km/h winds), they're going to level pretty much anything.

[Sunseeker]

Noone really builds brick, they're incredibly expensive. Most "brick" houses you see these days are really just normal wood houses with a brick fascade not unlike stucco. As for "concrete" houses I'm assuming you mean poured in the way some industrial buildings are? Again, mostly it's expensive and secondly it's rare that your average home-builder has the capacity to do so, because even the tools for doing so are expensive.

That all said, hurricanes and tornadoes fuck up brick and concrete buildings just fine. And repairs are often harder on such buildings than on wood, even if the "repairs" on wood are complete rebuilding.

[Thekri]

As the previous posters have mentioned, also it is important to note what "Often" is in relation to Hurricanes or Tornadoes. While the outer bands of a hurricane are huge, the majority of building based destruction is only caused by the eyewall, which is only about 40-50 miles wide for a large hurricane. So that 50ish mile point of destruction hits a random portion of the US coast on average about twice a year. Since the US has many thousands of miles of coastline, the chance of an average homeowner being directly hit by the eyewall of a hurricane are extremely remote. There is an excellent chance they will be effected by other effects of the hurricane, like falling trees, loss of power, flooding, etc, but the actual destruction of the house isn't likely. Heavy building construction doesn't really help with 95% of the problems they are likely to face, and it is a lot more expensive.

[Santti]

What I don't particularly understand, is why do they keep building in areas with recurring natural disasters. You'd think getting your shit wrecked every few years would get tiresome after a while.

[Nnyco]

Dont use logic when talking about the US.

[Sorensen]

What I don't particularly understand, is why do they keep building in areas with recurring natural disasters. You'd think getting your shit wrecked every few years would get tiresome after a while.

Why does anyone live in Europe when they keep having wars all the time dating back thousands of years?

You'd think getting your shit wrecked every few years would get tiresome after a while.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Brick won't stand against a strong enough tornado. Better then to use a cheaper, more abundant material that'll allow people to rebuild. And people live where their jobs and families are, if everyone fled areas prone to disastrous weather, very few countries would remain populated. And they'd be completely full, leading to other kinds of disasters.

Why does anyone live in Europe when they keep having wars all the time dating back thousands of years?

You'd think getting your shit wrecked every few years would get tiresome after a while.

I wasn't aware that we'd had any big, continent-spanning wars since WWII.

[Santti]

Why does anyone live in Europe when they keep having wars all the time dating back thousands of years?

You'd think getting your shit wrecked every few years would get tiresome after a while.

We Finns sure are warlike people.

But I guess Europeans were kinda dumb about the wars, unlike you guys, who just took the wars further away. Still get to have the wars, with minimal damage to your own country.

[Auxora]

The OPs question greatly oversimplifies the problem (a lot like the - why don't you in the US just get rid of all the guns posts). As others said, even a brick home won't withstand a F4 or F5 tornado. Additionally, the issues with hurricanes are more around flooding than wind.

Also, most people don't want to live in a home everyday that is like a military bunker just in case a once-in-a-lifetime storm event happens to them. That wouldn't be very practical way to live. And despite all the media coverage tornadoes get, the odds of one affecting a person even in the Midwest US are incredibly slim.

The US for all it's great geography has a couple unique things that cause these. It's the Gulf of Mexico and the Horn of Africa that are the causes of both. The warm air of the Gulf of Mexico pushing north running into air from the Rockies in the West is what causes tornadoes so often in the Midwest. If the Gulf were somehow blocked off by a giant dam and emptied, the US tornado problem would mostly disappear. But again like building all homes like military bunkers, not practical. Likewise, the Horn of Africa and warm ocean air there spins up storms like a top slowly spinning across a table to the southeast US. Just unfortunate geography, not a problem due to building material choice.

Lastly, there's insurance. There are wealthy people on the Carolina barrier islands with $1M+ homes that literally get wiped out every few years by hurricanes. The damage is covered by insurance, and they happily have their homes rebuilt, basically getting a free new home every few years. It's one of those fringe benefits the wealthy enjoy. The general public covers the losses in their premiums.

[Rozz]

Keep in mind that not every part of Tornado Alley gets hit as frequently as others. I've gone through more earthquakes than tornadoes so far, while 40 minutes out someone may say the opposite.

[Yunru]

What i dont understand, why they dont build they houses like a bunkers. A wind cant damage those at all. (in disaster areas only)

Concentrate + metal is cheap. And they dont even have to build them super thick.

[Mihalik]

We Finns sure are warlike people.

But I guess Europeans were kinda dumb about the wars, unlike you guys, who just took the wars further away. Still get to have the wars, with minimal damage to your own country.

Europe as a subcontinent simply won a random geographical lottery. It's geography places it so far north that it is protected from most tropical weather events (southern Europe is at the same latitude as the north of the mainland US/south of Canada). Furthermore it's long jagged coastline and the disposition of its mountains moderates its climate. Thus the sub continent is way warmer than it should be based on the latitude it is at and is protected from most extreme arctic events.

There are very very very few places on Earth that are as environmentally sheltered and as protected from extreme climate conditions as Europe.

No hurricanes, monsoons, relatively stable rain cycles, mostly temperate climate etc.

There isn't a single part of North America that would be as environmentally sheltered as Europe is.

If it's not hurricanes it's the polar vortex, if it's not that, then it's a water shortage, if it's not that then it's a lack of arable land, if it's not that it's flood zones etc.

People don't live in those places because they are stupid. They live there because the risk is manageable. At least it was. Climate change is now making these extreme climate conditions more severe than they were when they were first settled.

The south was settled where it was settled because those areas are optimal for the cultivation of sugar, tobacco and cotton. The engines of the global economy at the time.

California, Texas, Alaska etc were settled because of the abundance of natural resources. And so on.

[Belize]

Why do people in the US built wooden houses in areas which are known to be hit often by tornadoes or hurricanes? Is there a shortage in concrete or bricks?

Cheap materials, and a severe lack of building codes.

[Mihalik]

What i dont understand, why they dont build they houses like a bunkers. A wind cant damage those at all. (in disaster areas only)

Concentrate + metal is cheap. And they dont even have to build them super thick.

1. Would you like to live your entire life in a concrete bunker?

2. 99% of buildings will never be seriously damaged and can stand for generations or centuries mostly unaffected. The occasional broken window or missing tile is not the end of the world and most people can just fix it themselves in a couple of hours. Infrastructure damage is a different thing, but that usually gets patched up too by the authorities.... Eventually.

Meanwhile most people have a generator or some spare batteries and some bottled water.

3. Concrete and metal is most certainly NOT CHEAP. At all. While concrete itself can be relatively cheap, building with it is not. It's power, water and labor intensive. Furthermore it has really really really shitty building properties when it comes to insulation, humidity control etc. You can build well with it, but as soon as you are actually trying to build anything liveable the costs skyrocket.

[tylenol]

If you are a millionaire living on the coast you build bunkers, if not you are probably living in a house pre hurricane Andrew which means it's not up to code, IIRC most new places in Dade are all block.

It's basically money


You might think your "bunker" in Europe made of stone would survive hours of 150 mph winds but it probably won't, combined with storm surge, shit flying around and water literally falling out of the sky so fast everything gets overwhelmed

[Mihalik]

You might think your "bunker" in Europe made of stone would survive hours of 150 mph winds but it probably won't, combined with storm surge, shit flying around and water literally falling out of the sky so fast everything gets overwhelmed

Pretty much all European cities would be wiped out even by a moderate hurricane. Just as most European infrastructure with the exception of a handful of things on North Atlantic coast.

There's absolutely no point to build for 150mhp winds because those winds just do not occur. Ever. Also most of Europe (except the Low Countries as the name self evidently indicates) is so far above sea level that storm surges just aren't a thing. Sure there are a couple of coastal cities where it could happen, but for most of the continent it's just not an issue.

Also storm surges in the Mediterranean/Adriatic/Black Sea are a joke compared to what the Atlantic can produce, especially when combined with a hurricane.

[Zan15]

Why do people in the US built wooden houses in areas which are known to be hit often by tornadoes or hurricanes? Is there a shortage in concrete or bricks?

because there is a thing called federal insurance that is tax payer subsidized that keeps these people rebuilding over and over again in places they shouldn't.

its chock full of irony since the south is generally so much against socialist programs like this, benefit the most from it

[Rasulis]

Cheap materials, and a severe lack of building codes.

It varies from state. In CA, the typical residential buildings are designed for 3-second wind gust of up to 90 mph. Some areas, like Santa Cruz, requires higher wind gust values. New structures (last 10 years or so) located in what they called Wildland Urban Interface (our house is one of those) have to meet Wildland Urban Interface Codes and Standards. Most of these codes have to do with wildfire protection measures. Ranging from specific building materials and construction details.