The horror confronting residents and emergency workers probing the tornado wreckage in Oklahoma is unimaginable for those of us elsewhere. Collapsed schools, disintegrated homes, crushed cars and more. The main focus should be on aid.
But it?s worth beginning a conversation about ways to live safer in such hazard zones given that this storm season is just getting under way and that big regions of America?s tornado hot zone have deep vulnerability resulting from runaway growth and a human tendency to discount threats that have a low probability but disastrous potential. (The same issues are driving exposure to danger in hurricane zones.)
At the bottom of this post I?m appending a moving and important contribution from Kevin Simmons, an economist who blogs on the economics of natural hazards and is co-author, with Daniel Sutter, of ?Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes.? Simmons said there?ll be many lessons learned in examining where deaths occurred and were avoided in the path of this astounding twister. He noted the example of two destroyed schools:
Briarwood Elementary and Plaza Tower Elementary are about a mile apart and both were in the path of the storm. As of this writing there are no fatalities at Briarwood and many from Plaza Tower.
He stressed it?s too soon to know whether it was simple luck or other factors that made the difference.
[3:39 p.m. | The Associated Press has cited officials saying that the two schools did not have tornado safe rooms. The same issue is seen in Oregon, where hundreds of schools are known to be at risk from the next big earthquake.]
Read on below.
First, here?s a collection of readings that can hopefully offer a sustainable path for communities in this and other regions of the country where such devastation is an inevitable hazard ? even as tornado droughts and outbreaks come and go.
Growth
First, it?s important to understand the demographic shifts and regulatory gaps that have put so many people in harm?s way. Nowhere is the explosive growth rate around Oklahoma City put in clearer language than on the Web site of the City of Moore, which was ground zero for this enormous tornado and the most potent tornado ever recorded, on May 3, 1999:
The little town [founded in 1889 during the land rush] slumbered comfortably for seventy years ? then it exploded in a frenzy of expansion and development that attracted attention nationwide. In 1961 approximately 21.6 square miles of additional territory was annexed and Moore became a city in 1962. The decade of the 60?s saw Moore?s population soar.
The 1970 census showed an increase of more than 950% for a total of 18,761. The 1980 Census recorded 35,063 residents ? an 86% growth rate. Moore continued to grow during the 80?s, with the 1990 Census indicating a 15% increase to 40,318. The 2010 population for Moore is 55,081.
On May 3, 1999, Moore experienced the most violent tornado ever recorded. As a result, over 1,000 dwelling units were destroyed and some 3,000 to 4,000 residents were either temporarily or permanently displaced. Several hundred homes have been rebuilt, and Moore is almost 100% recovered from that devastating storm.
Construction
Much of the building boom that accompanied this population surge has not taken into account the implicit tornado danger in the region. Building codes don?t require safe rooms, despite years of research (and vivid examples after disasters) demonstrating how a few thousand dollars can save lives.
Oklahoma and the federal government have been encouraging safer construction in tornado zones. The state is in the second year of a program offering a limited number of $2,000 rebates through a lottery to cut the cost of adding a safe room to a home. But tornado-safe construction is still not the norm.
A superb resource is the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at?Texas Tech University.
Also read the Federal Emergency Management Agency document ?Taking Shelter From the Storm: Building a Safe Room For Your Home or Small Business.?
This is a pretty compelling sales pitch from Storm Shelters of Oklahoma LLC:
Would you own a car without seat belts or an airbag? Would you drive your one year old baby to day care without a proper child seat?
NO because we want our family and loved ones to be safe at all cost!
So why would you tell your family and loved ones to lay in a bathtub or under a staircase with a mattress over there head when the winds are going to reach in excess of 200 mph and can tear a house down to a bare slab in the matter of seconds?
[9:41 p.m. | I urge you to watch and share this video testimonial on the merits of a safe room, posted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Tom Cook, who lost his wife in a tornado in 2008 in Racine, Mo., describes how he moved with his daughter to Joplin, Mo., but to a house with a safe room. They survived the great Joplin tornado of 2011.]
Schools
It?s too soon to know if the destroyed schools were built to the best standards and followed recommended preparations and procedures. Here are two invaluable documents for communities in tornado hot zones:
?Tornado Preparedness Tips for School Administrators,? by Roger Edwards of the federal Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
?Designing School Safe Rooms,? written by two engineers at Toth and Associates, Brian M. Orr and Brent M. Davis. They note that cost is not prohibitive:
Creating safe havens in schools to protect against tornadoes can greatly aid communities while not blowing the budget if they are designed efficiently and early in the process
Here?s the note from Kevin M. Simmons, who is the Corrigan Chair of Economics and Business Administration at Austin College (he?ll be posting a version of this on his blog later this morning but gave permission for me to reproduce it):
Once again we are reminded of the violent nature of tornadoes. Tornadoes are not rare but a violent tornado (EF-4 or EF-5) hitting a populated area will, more often than not, mean tragedy. This one is personal for me. My family lived in OKC from 1999 through 2003. We were a part of the OKC community for the May 3, 1999 tornado and the May 15, 2003 tornado. Our son and his family still live there. So there is a visceral feeling as I watch the images of the unfolding event and the tragic aftermath.
Casualties
At this moment, the OKC Medical Examiner [is estimating 91 fatalities] but no one will be surprised if that number rises. That is larger than the 1999 tornado. In fact, you have to go back to the 1947 Woodward tornado to exceed the number of fatalities from this storm. Injury numbers have not been released but it is likely that the number of injuries will be over 1000.Damage
I?m often asked about damage the day after an event has occurred. At this point, only broad guesses are possible but if you consider the 1999 tornado as a guide, the damages will be in the billions. That tornado created damage of $1 billion and adjusted for inflation that number would be about $1.5 billion. I would consider that a good guess for a lower end for estimated damage. The Joplin tornado two years ago suffered $3 billion in damages.Storyline
As the days unfold, people will form opinions about this event. There are three storylines that I expect will dominate the coverage and I?d like to address those.1) First and foremost this is the story of a violent tornado in an urban area. As more and more people move into areas vulnerable to tornadoes, the population density rises. Tornadoes are a normal part of life in the plains and sometimes the atmospheric conditions are conducive to creating a monster storm. If that storm races across an open field, it?s an interesting event to watch, from a safe distance. But if that storm strikes a populated area, buildings will be destroyed and people will suffer injuries and regrettably some will perish. Urban sprawl is not going away so the job of researchers is to search for ways to minimize those casualties.
2) This is the third violent tornado to hit Moore in the last 15 years. The tempting storyline is to ask, ?What is unique about Moore??. But the question pre-supposes that tornadoes return to paths that they visited in the past. It certainly appears that way. Several times in the last few hours I have seen the path of the 1999 storm overlaid with the path of this one. I?m surprised that the 2003 path has not been on the same graphic as it also had a similar path through Moore. Harold Brooks did a very good job in attempting to dispel this analysis when he was interviewed on MSNBC. He pointed out that central Oklahoma is located where the warm, moist air from the Gulf collides with the cool dry air coming off the Rockies and that this confluence provides the necessary ingredients for violent tornadoes. Any community in central Oklahoma has the same chance of witnessing a violent tornado. In 2011, an EF-5 tornado hit El Reno which is located on northwest of the OKC metro area. Fewer people were killed simply due to the lower population density.
3) The final storyline that I expect will be discussed deals with the two schools tragically hit by this tornado. Briarwood Elementary and Plaza Tower Elementary are about a mile apart and both were in the path of the storm. As of this writing there are no fatalities at Briarwood and many from Plaza Tower. Why? This is an important area of inquiry and the reasons are likely complex. It could be engineering. Was one school built differently from the other? It could be storm intensity. Along a tornadoes path, the intensity will vary. A small change in intensity can have different effects on buildings and it could be that the change in intensity was sufficient to create very different outcomes on buildings so close to each other. It could be location. The path of the storm is estimated to be a mile wide. But wind intensities vary within the path with the strongest winds toward the center. Or it could be tragic luck. Where in the building were the children when struck by the storm?
Tornadoes are both fascinating and terrifying events. I have lived in this part of the country all my life and have developed a respect for the power of nature. It is my hope and prayer that the victims of this tragedy find the help that they need as they put the pieces of their lives back together.
Climate Change
I?ll add a final thought about the persistent discussion of the role of greenhouse-driven climate change in violent weather in Tornado Alley. [Andrew Freedman at Climate Central has a superb post on the climate angle.]
It?s an important research question but, to me, has no bearing at all on the situation in the Midwest and South ? whether there?s a tornado outbreak or drought. The forces putting people in harm?s way are demographic, economic, behavioral and architectural. Any influence of climate change on dangerous tornadoes (so far the data point to a moderating influence) is, at best, marginally relevant and, at worst, a distraction.
I sent the following note around this morning to a batch of climate scientists and disaster researchers (reprising a similar proposal in 2011):
The climate community did a great service to the country in 2006 in putting out a joint statement on the enormous human vulnerability in coastal zones to hurricanes ? setting aside questions about the role of greenhouse-driven warming in changing hurricane patterns.
I think it?s time for another ? for Tornado Alley.
I hope they?ll come through.
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Tumblr is still shipping.?Despite all the noise surrounding the Yahoo-Tumblr acquisition, the company has just pushed out an update to its iOS application introducing a new user interface that now includes the almost Path-like post chooser, previously introduced in the Android version. This interface design is becoming more common today, but it’s most reminiscent?of things like Mac’s Fan Stack feature, for example, or social network Path, which popularized the concept on mobile devices. For those unfamiliar, the post chooser is the button you tap to add content to your Tumblr blog, including text, photos, video, quotes, links and more. Now, instead of having a compose button at the bottom right of the screen that launches a page of these options as a starting point for your post, in the updated version of Tumblr’s iOS app, the compose button will fan out the choices overlaid on your current window?as small, round tappable buttons. The revamped interface is the most notable change in today’s update, though Tumblr for iOS now also allows for app attribution in posts, according to its description in iTunes. The iOS version of Tumblr’s application was updated just last month, at that time forgoing the then Android-only interface, in favor of a feature that actually made Tumblr’s infamous animated GIFs animate when you scrolled down. (At last!).?That release also introduced more social sharing options to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper and Pocket, and more, as well as additional gestures. The updated version of Tumblr for iOS is now live here in iTunes. In case you don’t remember how the iOS app looked before, here’s an earlier version showing the old post screen: (h/t parislemon)
