OT Tornado Pictures Kansas

At least you can hide from a tornado, Dave - try hiding from an earthquake!

The weird thing about Greensburg is the grain elevator and local bar are the 2 least damaged buildings in town.

As I was listening to the news the other day, I was thinking of how many more US and Canadian residents die before their time from tornados and storms than by quakes.

Wanting to make going to the stores acorss the streett more interesting, I often fantisize about someone coming up to me at an ATM and demanding my money. I would reply, "I wonder what the odds are of two people running onto each other who are both willing to die for $200."

Studebaker cheap to the end.

Karl

So how many died in San Francisco, Alex? You can choose between the most recent, or the one in 1906. How about some of the ones in Turkey or Japan?

If you live in Tornado Alley, you merely live with the threat and the aftermath. Floridians do the same with hurricanes (far less localized than a tornado). The old So-Cal joke was the 4 seasons were wildfire, landslides, earthquake, riot. Let's face it - the Earth may not be a safe place to live sometimes!

Get serious. 1906? Thats 100 years ago. Safety standards are much higher now. As for the other countries, Turkey has poor standards for their construction. Japan has a disasterous earthquake ever decade or less often. Tornados kill people in America every year. A large earthquake in an old city like Los Angeles would kill lots of people. Unless I happen to be passing through and old downtown section of some city when and earthquake strikes I am in litte danger.

According to National Safety Council, your odds of dying in an earthquake are 1 in 117,127 - (21st most common).

Tornados didn't even make the top 23 killers. Lightning and floods are 20th and 22nd. You are more likely to be killed by hot weather (1 in 13,729) - 17th.

Interestingly, accidental firearms discharge kills 1 in 5,134 (14th) and firearm assault kills 1 in 314 (7th).

Obligatory Stude content: Ernestine the 49 coupe has risen to the top of my to-do list. Encouraging words sought.

Shouldn't you be worried about a wild fire in Los Angeles?

I guess the solution is for FEMA to not allow the town to rebuild because of a possible repeat of another tornado. Maybe this time they could put some old trailer houses a few miles from town to act as a decoy.

Lee

I made sure not to live too close to a wildland area and not to have a wood shake roof. Our county has a very good record of not losing many houses to brush fires because we have a very aggressive weed abatement program and strict building codes for houses near brush areas.. Other counties in southern California have done a poor job of that in the past and some still do.. The area when those five firemen were burned to death last year was a death trap waiting to happen. Of course, even with the best plans sometimes things still go wrong. I like the decoy idea (:-)

The problem is that we don't let wildfires burn themselves out. Mother Nature has a better plan than we do... which is why we now have these massive forest fires that take weeks to contain. Anytime someone drops a cigarette we have to call in the water bombers. Ever seen a burn area 5 years later... no dead underbrush, no choked out vegitation, etc... when it does start to choke itself out, here comes Mr. Lightning to clean up and start the cycle over. But Mr. Developer steps in and says I can make a ton of money here... and here we are.

We used to burn ditches in ND ever fall, mainly to keep snow from building up... but now they have these wildlife areas where that is no longer allowed... and counties are spending twice as much in fuel each winter to keep the roads open and the ditches look horrible every spring because of the build up of dead grass.

Lee