Text 8290, 34 rader
Skriven 2010-06-07 09:58:06 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Tornado woes
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Just reading about the tornadoes yesterday in the US Midwest... saw a picture
of a house (admittedly in Ontario, but still hit by the same "wave" of
tornadoes) which I thought quite interesting:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-55631-2.html

See how the tree just chopped the house in half?

When we had the severe windstorm here in Datteln in 2007 (hurricane Cyril), I
saw a house where practically the same thing had happened - huge tree uprooted
and fell on the roof of the house.

The big difference was that only the roof of the house was damaged here. The
rest of the house, being brick, was undamaged. The roof was repaired in the
next week and everything was OK, doubtless paid by insurance.

But the typical wood frame construction of houses in North America just doesn't
hold up to any really serious violence, as the picture shows.

It would seem such wood frame houses should be much cheaper than solid ones
build of masonry, but even that doesn't appear to be the case in the States.
The question doesn't really arise in Germany because there are so few such
houses here - most places are built of brick or masonry (cinder blocks, but
really dense ones - not the coarse-grained stuff I'm familiar with from the
States).

No conclusions except that brick is more stable than wood (remember the three
little pigs and the wold who wanted to blow their houses doen?). The picture
just reminded me of that.

Cheers, Bob

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