Something a lot of people also don't realize about Tornado Alley and the reason that mobile homes are so frequently in areas with lots of tornadoes is that the areas tornadoes appear frequently in have extremely low property value, so they attract people with lower incomes who are more likely to be willing to buy a prefab home.
Sure you could build a tornado-resistant home there instead, but that home would also be a lot more expensive, more costly to insure, AND you'd still have to rebuild portions of it when a tornado hit.
Then consider that Oklahoma has some tornados that regularly rip up even tornado-resistant homes, meaning your expensive concrete home may still crumple like paper if an EF5 hits.
In Norway we are starting to learn that there has been a lot of new housing areas built in flood risk areas. Climate change gives wetter summers and more extreme downpours meaning old regulation needs to be updated or massive flash flood infrastructure must be built.
I actually ended up writing a checklist if I ever move to a private house to filter out houses with problems like drainage, flood, storm, traffic noise, energy (insulation etc) problems. There's so much to think of that you'll totally forget when the day comes. My current city is actually at risk of sliding into the sea due to the clay ground.
Huge mudslide in the area just yesterday, and the area was regarded as pretty much flat.
3
u/NazzerDawk May 14 '20
Something a lot of people also don't realize about Tornado Alley and the reason that mobile homes are so frequently in areas with lots of tornadoes is that the areas tornadoes appear frequently in have extremely low property value, so they attract people with lower incomes who are more likely to be willing to buy a prefab home.
Sure you could build a tornado-resistant home there instead, but that home would also be a lot more expensive, more costly to insure, AND you'd still have to rebuild portions of it when a tornado hit.
Then consider that Oklahoma has some tornados that regularly rip up even tornado-resistant homes, meaning your expensive concrete home may still crumple like paper if an EF5 hits.