It’s beginning to look a lot like spring, and for OU students, this means several things: spring break and the associated two week cake hiatus to fit into that new bikini, people wearing flip flops again and the start of the severe weather season. It’s the third one with which I am concerned.
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are serious business in Oklahoma. The memory of the violent F4 tornado that hit Lone Grove and killed eight residents is still fresh. From 1999-2008, National Weather Service records show 630 people in the U.S. lost their lives as a result of tornadoes. Statistics show people who live in mobile homes are the most endangered during tornado season, and state lawmakers should take action to ensure these people are safe.
The same National Weather Service records also split the tornado death figures into those killed in mobile homes, permanent structures and elsewhere, such as outdoors and in cars. In the last 10 years, more than half of those killed by tornadoes were in mobile homes. While contemplating this, keep in mind only 7 percent of the U.S. population lives in mobile homes.
Even F1 tornadoes that may only cause slight damage to permanent structures can do significant damage to mobile homes. Clearly, mobile home residents are far more vulnerable to injury in severe storms than those of us who live in apartment blocks or houses.
The National Severe Storms Laboratory, housed right here in Norman, states on its Web site “the problem of warning and sheltering mobile home residents has become the biggest obstacle to continuing to reduce death tolls from tornadoes”. So, what can be done about this?
Some states, like Iowa, have laws that counties may adopt ordinances requiring any mobile home park to contain a storm shelter large enough to accommodate the maximum residential capacity of the park.
It is about time Oklahoma followed suit. After touring two mobile home parks devastated by the Lone Grove tornado, Rep. Pat Ownbey, R-Ardmore, said he would like to see a bill “requiring mobile home parks to actually be responsible, maybe through tax credits, to put in some tornado shelters so they could have safety.”
It wasn’t until recently I realized legislation for this was not already in place. I was astounded by this discovery and I applaud Ownbey for bringing this issue to light.
I hope appropriate legislation will be passed before any more Oklahomans lose their lives.
Of course, building storm shelters in mobile home parks across the state would cost money, but there are sources of funding available. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency Web site, community development block grant funds can be used to construct tornado shelters in manufactured home parks containing at least 20 units. Even in these tough economic times, this is a necessity for which funding should always be available.
The occurrence of severe weather here is a fact of life. We have no power to change that. What we can change is what we do to prepare for severe weather when it strikes, and offer protective measures to our friends and neighbors.
Nobody should be put at risk by severe storms by the type of housing in which they choose to live. This spring, it is time we made the safety of all Oklahomans during severe weather a priority.
-Charlotte Wainwright is a meteorology graduate student.
kdbp1213 3 years, 2 months ago
it's a continuation of the nanny-state............ some level of gvt pays for my risk & i should expect renumeration when bad weather (an act of a god?) takes out my home. this is why i have a home-owner's insurance policy per my mortgage company's mandate............
EricHanson 3 years, 2 months ago
Yea I should not be responsible for living in a mobile home that puts me at increased risk for a tornado death. I need the government to force someone to make a shelter for me. Real American of me - subsidize the risk of my choice to everyone else (tax payers). To steal your own words, how about we don't sit around and hope for legislation to be our salvation, but instead do something about our problem.
Mesocyclone 3 years, 2 months ago
I think that implementing tornado shelters in mobile home parks are a great idea. But I don't think the government - or more accurately, the taxpayers - should be paying for it. I think that what the states should do is pass laws that require mobile home parks to install tornado shelters, in states where tornadoes are a significant threat (like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, etc). But that's something that has to be done at the state level, and it will be up to people living in those states to lobby their state government to enact such laws. Then, the costs associated with putting in the tornado shelter in the mobile home park will be included as part of the price of the mobile home when a person buys the home. This way, only the people who are choosing to live in mobile homes are paying the cost of having a tornado shelter put in (and not the entire public). I think that's a much better solution than taxing everyone for someone else's decision to live in a highly tornado-vulnerable structure.
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