trailers and tornado's (Muskogee, Poteau, Wilburton: new house, middle school, shop)
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St Louis must have been a great place to live in the 50s, Karibear. Did that tornado make you more or less afraid of tornadoes?
My trailer has anchors, and it had a big deck roof built on 3 sides that will hold the trailer in place.
In any house or trailer, you do need an underground shelter of some sort, whether a public one nearby or your own hidey-hole.
STL was what it was. It was the only thing I knew, and at that time I was still young enough to think tornados were an adventure. Besides, I loved thunder and lightning, and still do.
What was funny, looking back, was that I thought the whole country revolved around STL. When I was 12 or 13, I went to Yellowstone with my aunt and uncle, and while I sort of knew there were stockyards in Kansas City and grain was grown in other places, I had NO idea what people that far away did for a living. After all, they lived too far away to commute to STL to work every day! I wasn't a stupid kid, either, just clueless.
The tie down straps on a MH are almost useless against a tornado. Most mobiles are light weight, paneled walls and thin metal skin on the outside. No match for a tornado. But then again, how many houses can take a direct hit from a tornado? I live in a MH, You cant touch a house for the same price as a MH..
Our trailer is a little more well constructed than some trailers of the past. It has wood siding instead of the metal skin. The main problem with trailers is that they depreciate over time. When our trailer wears out we will build a regular house. *nightmare*
I visited St Louis a few times in the 60s and 70s, and really liked the city. Later though I don't know what happened there. Parts of town looked like it had been bombed the last time I was there.
Keribear,I am a "greenie" and would love an underground house,just for the energy savings and because of hail,microbursts,and tornado's.Kudzu is the nastiest stuff in the world,it is illegal to import it to Oregon.I've gotten use to western Oregon-where a cheap house is 200,000 and the cost of putting a manufactured home on a property costs 20,000-30,000 in permits alone.My neighbor bought a 720 sq ft,1/3 acre house that had been vacant and neglected for several years for 135000 and was in a bidding war.They were thrilled.Another bought a 10+ year old,2 bedroom doublewide on a small lot for 155,000.Both were bought within the last 4 months.We expect prices to bounce back up soon.It is hard to explain prices to Midwesterners,I'm from there and I still am in sticker shock.I will be happy to sell here and buy in cash in OK with no mortgage and acreage to boot.I just don't think I will buy a mobile or manufactured home.
Keribear,I am a "greenie" and would love an underground house,just for the energy savings and because of hail,microbursts,and tornado's.Kudzu is the nastiest stuff in the world,it is illegal to import it to Oregon.I've gotten use to western Oregon-where a cheap house is 200,000 and the cost of putting a manufactured home on a property costs 20,000-30,000 in permits alone.My neighbor bought a 720 sq ft,1/3 acre house that had been vacant and neglected for several years for 135000 and was in a bidding war.They were thrilled.Another bought a 10+ year old,2 bedroom doublewide on a small lot for 155,000.Both were bought within the last 4 months.We expect prices to bounce back up soon.It is hard to explain prices to Midwesterners,I'm from there and I still am in sticker shock.I will be happy to sell here and buy in cash in OK with no mortgage and acreage to boot.I just don't think I will buy a mobile or manufactured home.
The 'kudzu' part was kind of a joke passed along - like I said, it was a major topic on one of the rural ngs for quite a while. Deliberatly growing kudzu is kind of in the same category of raising nutria, as in once you've got them, what do you DO with them?
If you are seriously interested in having a place as tornado/other disaster proof as possible, consider a half-dugout rammed earth or ferrocement structure. Both are great for moderating temperatures, hold heat well in winter and cool in summer. But unless you used ferrocement and buried it completely, you'd still run the risk of having windows blow out and losing things to the wind, even if the structure wasn't damaged. The best alternative would be to have one of the surplus missile silos, but they sure aren't the deal they used to be! As for storm cellars, I've heard of quite a few people who use shipping vans - not the full length of what is pulled by a semi, a shorter one, and what they do is buy an old container and have it buried. There's usually someone who has a D-5 or 7 or so that's willing to dig a big hole and then bury it again, and leave a ramp to the door.
I'd like a house like the one my grandfather built. It was brick and cement, in the European style. The basement walls were 18" thick, and the bricks were laid end on rather than long ways, and those walls were a foot thick. It was always warm in winter and cool in summer, there were never any bugs or water working their way through cracks ini cement or mortar. In fact, nearly a hundred years after he built it, after a number of quakes from the New Madrid fault, the pocket door separating the dining room from the living room still slides smoothly, all the sash windows slide easily up and down, and the 3 porches - all cement - don't have a single crack anywhere. The only damage is to part of the sidewalk where the city equipment broke a couple slabs when they widened the road.
Having said that, I like both frame homes and mobiles equally. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage to mobiles is the financing. Most lenders won't touch them, unless they are relatively new and at least a doublewide. Then it's still a case by case decision. One lender told me they just won't do mobiles of any kind in a number of states including OK, because often when the people flake off and the lender sends someone out to reposess it, there's nothing but an empty pad - the deadbeats leave and take 'home' away with them. A dealer will be happy to set up and finance, but only if you have a deed to the land first. I'm getting a frame house because that's the only way I can finance it. If you have cash, you have many other options.
The cost of real estate is western WA is just like yours. That's one of many reasons I want to get away. Any place where JQP has to pay 500k+ with a 60 year mortgage and a yard measured in square feet isn't where I want to end my days.
Our trailer is a little more well constructed than some trailers of the past. It has wood siding instead of the metal skin. The main problem with trailers is that they depreciate over time. When our trailer wears out we will build a regular house. *nightmare*
I visited St Louis a few times in the 60s and 70s, and really liked the city. Later though I don't know what happened there. Parts of town looked like it had been bombed the last time I was there.
Part of the problem with STL [in my opinion] is that the city and county have always been separate. The city is a port of entry, and is not within any county at all. Dicey taxes, dicey lots of things. People living in the county and working in the city, even back in the '50s, had to have 2 separate auto tax stickers.
The last time I was there - 2000 - it still looked like a war zone, but some of the county looked like that, too. Large residential areas of the city are comletely uninhabited, it's like a ghost town. A lot of militant block-busting, breaking up of older ethnic neighborhoods, a lot of the smaller towns in the county creating their own ordinances, taxes going through the roof because so many people were leaving the municipalities had to get their income from somewhere. And there seems to be a fairly heavy drug trade going on in areas near the airport and some of the smaller communities. There are a lot of places for sale on ebay and other online repo buyers/brokers, that look quite nice but are in areas where the residents refuse to so much as open their doors after dark, let alone actually go outside even into their own yards. When I was a kid, there were a few parts of the city where one just didn't go after dark, now there are a lot more sll around the county where one doesn't go at any time, dark or not. Not without going in an armored tank, anyway.
Not too many cities scare me, but I was trying to get to the Arch and show my daughter a little of St Louis. Took a wrong turn somehow and . It was like some futuristic movie.
The area where I live now is not very tornado prone, but I would be uneasy if I didn't have a shelter. I want to be below ground if one ever does hit.
I guess I've been reading too much on this thread. I had a dream about a tornado touching down in our neighborhood last night. All I can remember though is seeing it form in the sky, and then come down to the ground and head straight for our house. I recall running in and telling everyone to take cover, all the while praying it was only an F1..
I would be afraid to live in a trailer in OK. I am afraid to live in a house. LOL.
Out here in rural Oklahoma you will see a lot of trailers. And for the most part, the twisters have been steering clear of us. Like someone else mentioned, the twister that scares me the most is the ones that come in the middle of the night and rain wrapped.
I am not sure why there are so many trailers, maybe because historically, rural land was cheap here and the economics factor kicked in. We sold 10 acres and the new neighbors put up a double wide for 20K. That's a far cry from $100K to $160K for a home in the city.
I always learned to associate the nicer brick home with ranchers property.
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. It was like some futuristic movie.
