With tornadoes, the best place (safest) to be is underground. But many houses in the south-central U.S. don't have basements (we have a shallow depth-to-bedrock here, and it would be expensive to build a house with a basement).
So the next best thing is to put as many walls and sturdy stuff as possible between yourself and the outside world. And in most one-story houses, that's an interior bathroom. (The bathroom in my house is entirely surrounded by other rooms). Supposedly the bathtub is safe - if you're covered by a mattress or something - because it protects against flying debris.
They do have storm shelters on campus, and I went to them a few times when there were alerts and I lived in an apartment...but after dealing with the crush of humanity there, the crying babies, the people who wanted to make me their New Best Friend and tell me all about their gallbladder surgery...I decided once I moved to a house, I'd take my chances with the bathroom.
A lot of people also have storm shelters, which are small (smaller than a basement) underground spaces you can go in. I don't have one, and besides, someone I knew who had one said his got full of brown recluse spiders - so unless you sprayed for spiders on a regular basis, your choice was tornado or venomous spider bite.\
I forget that people outside the central U.S. don't have our level of experience with tornadoes...
2 comments:
Thank you for the explanation!
I had seen several tornadoes (thankfully, from afar) when traveling on Greyhound from NY to Detroit, somewhere in vicinity of Cleveland, on several trips. Other than that and being introduced to the idea by Wizard of Oz, I've no personal familiarity with the topic.
The best place to see a tornado is definitely At A Safe Distance. What you don't want to do is go outside while a storm that's already taken out several hundred houses passes to within, oh, 800 yards of your front door.
(And my bathroom has one exterior wall, albeit a short one. Clearly I am doomed.)
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