Watch for the aid amounts for Greensburg, people..

[SoCalDem]

If there are 1500 people in the town, that;s probably 800 households.. $50K per family would build houses for them for about $40M. The downtown businesses would probably be of comparable cost. This was a SMALL town, and the gas was turned off prior to the storm, so if it;'s underground, it;s probably fixable.

This should be a test case of how efficient rebuilding could be.

The have lost their history, but if they want their town back, it IS do-able.

The question is, will money be allocated properly and spent carefully on what the people need.

Modular housing is not safe, so that's not even an option here. The grain elevators (concrete) were about the only thing that survived.

This was a farm community, so replacement of equipment and structures to house them might the of the first order.

edited for glaring math error :)

[OlderButWiser]

1. What is it about...

...modular housing that makes it unsafe?

[SoCalDem]

3. T O R N A D O S

:rofl:

[OlderButWiser]

4. Are you being serious?

...from what I know about modular housing is that they are pretty much the same as stick built homes. You're not talking about mobile homes are you?

[SoCalDem]

6. Yes. I was talking about the usual FEMA-issued "housing"

But,, even the real modualr housing usually comes sans basement, which ids definitely needed in Kansas .

[annabanana]

2. Interesting housing option

http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/

Many kinds of modular homes can be made economically with out of use shipping containers. I'm thinking that they might be especially useful where it might be nice to live in something harder to blow around. (All kinds and styles, some quite attractive)

[Captain Angry]

5. I wonder how deep they can be buried in that part of the country.

It seems to me that all of those unused containers would make incredible underground tornado shelters.

If I had some land, I'd get two of them for underground storage.

[uppityperson]

10. They would have to be dug in at least partway to avoid being blown around.

Trains are blown over, big trucks blown around, etc. They would have to be dug partway into the ground to keep them anchored.

[Firespirit]

7. Er...

It's $40,000,000, not $400K. But that's chump change for a government; how long does it take to spend that in Iraq, I wonder?

Unfortunately FEMA is already threatening to bring in the trailers, so I hear. Honestly the people would probably be better off staying where they currently are, rather than living in those death traps. There were so many lives saved because of basements, and tornado season for the Plains states has a ways to go yet.

In past decades, when a tornado wiped out an entire small town, it rarely came back. The 1999 tornado that hit Moore and Bridge Creek, OK, was a bit of an exception -- those communities returned. I hope that Greensburg takes the same path.

[karlrschneider]

9. The last couple decades it has become common here in Eastern Okla to

dig a small basement and park a mobile home directly over it...cut a hole in the floor, some steps and voila, an easy to reach storm cellar. One of our friends who's in construction has 'retro-fitted' quite a few by digging down right by the door and putting in one of those huge concrete water pipeline sections in the hole. It's waterproof, cheap and convenient.

[Firespirit]

12. Go with what works, I guess

I just finished reading a book about the Oklahoma City F5 tornado of 1999, and how many of the deaths were in mobile homes. At that time, at least, it seems that it was uncommon for trailer parks to have community storm shelters. It may still be, if the individual residents have to dig their own.

I'm a transplant from the Gulf Coast, and the people in the second "Tornado Alley" (meaning the South) are extremely unprepared for these things. As a result, the death toll is typically far worse for a given tornado in that region than it would be for a comparable tornado in the traditional Tornado Alley.

[karlrschneider]

14. Yeah, I don't know about trailer parks, there aren't any around here, but

about a third of homes out in this lakeside area are trailers. I don't know what percentage of them (or of regular type houses) have on-property shelters but I'd guess overall probably less than 3 or 4 out of 10. We think it's stupid NOT to have one especially since there are no warning sirens or much of anything else besides TV to get alerted and that's not all that great because the power tends to be flaky at times...

[karlrschneider]

8. Uh, 50K x 800 is 40 million...

not quarreling with your point, just the arithmetic. ;-)

[SoCalDem]

11. Oops.. well we now know I was not a math major :)

fixed it :)

[karlrschneider]

15. No prob, your point was well made.

:-)

[HuskiesHowls]

13. Comment on the Weather Channel

was that it would take at least a year to rebuild. My thought was "to do the work, or just to get the money?"

[karlrschneider]

16. Probably a year for each.

:eyes:

[MadMaddie]

17. Shouldn't the real question and comparison be...

How quickly will the State of Kansas and the US Government fund the rebuilding of homes and businesses in the devastated area and the rate and which the rebuilding starts?

and then compare.....those statistics to the types of rebuilding going on in the Gulf Coast?

Don't get me wrong the victims of both of these disasters have forever had their lives altered but I suspect you will see a more efficient response to the Kansas victims than the Gulf victims.

Your question "The question is, will money be allocated properly and spent carefully on what the people need"!

If recent history tells us anything the graft, the favoritism to unqualified companies taking jobs that locals can do etc....has not changed...so my bet is the money will be pissed away and there will be no accountability.....

[uppityperson]

18. I bet there are going to be lots of people watching this with interest.

[karlrschneider]

19. They will do much better and take credit for having "learned" from the Katrina debacle

and NOLA will still be where it is now.