After the recent near-total destruction of a small town in Kansas some people are calling for better tornado prediction and detection. Evidently the 20 minute warning that allowed residents to take cover such that while 95% of all buildings were destroyed, less than 1% of the population was injured.
It seems to me that the warning systems work quite well and it is the building systems that have failed. If these homes, smack in the middle of Tornado Alley, were built with the possibility of tornadoes in mind, as seems reasonable given the location, then this event would not have resulted in such a disaster.
Unfortunately, as usual, people fail to plan, choosing to gamble that they will only ever have to deal with minor disasters and that major events, for example, mile-and-a-half-wide tornadoes with 200+ MPH winds, will always go around them. They hope that if something major happens their government will come bail them out, forgetting that the government might have sent all the local National Guard equipment to Iraq or might perhaps have hired an incompetent person to direct FEMA. They forget that when it really comes down to surviving a disaster there is only one person who is ultimately responsible for their preparation.
If you plan for rainy days, what will you do when it storms?
It seems to me that the warning systems work quite well and it is the building systems that have failed. If these homes, smack in the middle of Tornado Alley, were built with the possibility of tornadoes in mind, as seems reasonable given the location, then this event would not have resulted in such a disaster.
Unfortunately, as usual, people fail to plan, choosing to gamble that they will only ever have to deal with minor disasters and that major events, for example, mile-and-a-half-wide tornadoes with 200+ MPH winds, will always go around them. They hope that if something major happens their government will come bail them out, forgetting that the government might have sent all the local National Guard equipment to Iraq or might perhaps have hired an incompetent person to direct FEMA. They forget that when it really comes down to surviving a disaster there is only one person who is ultimately responsible for their preparation.
If you plan for rainy days, what will you do when it storms?
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