Mobile homes turn deadly when tornadoes hit. This year has been especially bad, AP analysis finds
By SETH BORENSTEIN, CAMILLE FASSETT and MICHAEL GOLDBERG
Updated 4:29 PM CDT, July 28, 2023
Deaths in manufactured homes make up majority of fatalities that occur at home in weaker tornadoes
Of tornadoes with wind speeds under 135 mph, or storms rated 2 or lower on the Enhanced Fujita scale, 79% of deaths at home since 1996 have been in mobile homes. Deaths in permanent structures generally occur during stronger storms.
(This was originally a bar chart, but can't be copied or linked)
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Tornadoes in the United States are disproportionately killing more people in mobile or manufactured homes, especially in the South, often victimizing some of the most socially and economically vulnerable residents. Since 1996, tornadoes have killed 815 people in mobile or manufactured homes, representing 53% of all the people killed at home during a tornado, according to an Associated Press data analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tornado deaths. Meanwhile, less than 6% of America’s housing units are manufactured homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While the dangers of tornadoes to mobile homes have long been known, and there are ways to mitigate the risk, the percentage of total tornado deaths that happen in mobile homes has been increasing. Part of the problem is that
federal housing rules that call for tougher manufactured home standards, including anchoring,
only apply in hurricane zones, which is most of Florida and then several counties along the coast.
Those are not the areas where tornadoes usually hit.
Auburn University engineering professor David Roueche called manufactured homes in non-coastal places “death traps compared to most permanent homes” when it comes to tornadoes.
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The manufactured housing industry — which disputes that there’s any disproportionate danger — insists on calling the structures manufactured homes if they are built after hurricane-based federal standards in 1976 and mobile homes if they are built before, saying age of the home matters. Federal housing officials use the term manufactured housing. Other people, including many researchers and residents, use the terms interchangeably.
More than 70% of the 8 million manufactured homes in America were built after 1976. Because a big chunk were built in the 1980s and early 1990s, 60% of all those homes were installed before increased federal standards were adopted in 1994, the industry’s trade group, Manufactured Housing Institute said.
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long, and VERY THOROUGH article at:
https://apnews.com/article/tornado-mobile-home-death-crushed-b3a0e41ffd83a2681a92b8e4dad0ef06
If you live in tornado country, you know house trailers (ex
cuuuuse me, 'manufactured housing') are not a safe "solution".
= new reply since forum marked as read