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People can buy shelters and have them installed for around $3500 and it can be financed as well.
Why don't they ?
I'm further south in Texas then where tornado alley ends and I keep tabs on how far south these things hit.
Oh and those old farmhouses with those "storm shelters" you talk about (Wizard of Oz)..they were actually root cellars.
Their primary purpose was for long term food storage and doubled as storm shelters.
Maybe this will drive more to spend that money to put a shelter in their back yard.
They don't all look that ugly.
I lived in a place like that in Fremont Nebraska. Actually, it used to be a basement house. Meaning the entire home was underground. The only thing that was above ground was the roof. However, they later added another floor to the home. It had two built-in root cellars, but since there was also a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and two bedrooms already in the basement, it was not necessary to use the root cellars for shelter.
Out zoning board forbids building a basement and living in it because it does not generate enough tax revenue. I have been in a couple of these homes and they are quite snug if you like living in a concrete cave. Then again, why not, almost all of use work in a variant of a concrete cave with cubicles instead of barcoloungers.
This sounds like one of the "booby trap" laws not intended to pass but to be a political landmine.
You know, a "help the children" law but with so many onerous provisions that you can't really support it.
Then when you vote against it (as intended) you get hit with politicized charges of hating the children or whatever.
If this were really about public safety there are a lot more prevalent problems than the absence of storm shelters. Mandatory youth swimming classes would be the first thing to spring to mind.
Also should ban tube televisions and wall-mount TV's that can fall on kids....make everyone buy new flatscreens that weigh less.....at some point you need to let people make some of their own decisions regarding safety and budget.
Which is why it is important to read the covenant before you buy.
They can change over time though through elections and change of residents.
Plenty of stories out there to attest to that. And grandfather rules don't help much because then you become the social outcast in your neighborhood.
Maybe you'd like to dictate colors and window treatments too?
An over simplification. We do dictate items of safety on how a home gets put together, or a commercial building. California has protections for earthquakes. . . .Homes on the water often need to be raised slightly.
Though with every safety requirement there is a limit to how far/reward for the requirement. For example. . .Tornado's aren't that frequent of a occurrence. What is the chance a specific house will get hit?
For areas were the chance is significant. . . I think the following idea may be worthwhile:
1) consider shelters in older neihboorhoods, trailer parks, or places without basements
2) basements in new homes, or remodels, should have a safe zone built to withstand a the highest likely storm for the area
What about all those nuclear underground bunkers? Don't we have like a bunch of those leftover from the Communist paranoia?
Those were built in the late 50's, early 60's. There was one about a mile from where I lived as a kid. It was nothing but the basement of a bank building. The building was declared structurally unsafe (earthquake country) and demolished in the 90's. I suspect most had a similar fate.
I was in the bank right before they demolished it and asked the teller about the shelter. She said, "Is that what it was? There's nothing in there but a bunch of boxes of crackers in crates." So we were apparently supposed to somehow get to the shelter, fight our way in, (it wouldn't have held more than 100 or so people) let the nuclear cloud sweep over us, the whole town was supposed to eat a bunch of crackers, then we were to emerge into..... nothing.
Before we get all excited about shelters, let's discuss how long people have to get INTO those shelters.
I would go for a shelter in a school, but not mandated for private homes.
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