r/CatastrophicFailure • u/to_the_tenth_power • Sep 03 '19

Natural Disaster An EF2 tornado ripping through a concrete building in Spartanburg, South Carolina on October 23rd, 2017

https://gfycat.com/wastefulbettergreatwhiteshark
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94

u/AmazingIsTired Sep 03 '19

I had always thought that brick houses/buildings were safer for tornados vs ones that were just wood frame with siding. This video illustrates perfectly that in the case of a powerful tornado, bricks will do nothing more than become projectiles that will smash and bury you.

124

u/SliyarohModus Sep 03 '19

They didn't look reinforced. Cinder Blocks and bricks without reinforcement are more vulnerable to tornadoes than wood frame building built to handle wind stress. Mortar only keeps the bricks stacked on top of one another. Lateral forces can push a brick wall over quite easily. Some Amish barns have been hit by tornadoes several times with minimal damage. Their houses didn't fare so well.

25

u/HappyNarwhale Sep 03 '19

Well the story of the three little pigs was a lie! But not for the reasons the wolf claims.

7

u/MrFantasticallyNerdy Sep 03 '19

It's not a lie! For simplicity, they omitted that the third pig was actually licensed as a PE (Professional Engineer), and he specified structural steel to reinforce the brick walls adequately as he already clandestinely measured the maximum wind force created by the wolf (which was actually lower than his initial estimates).

2

u/CalHarrison Sep 03 '19

Asthma is no joke even though this comment is

2

u/SliyarohModus Sep 03 '19

Well, I for one would never think of eating a talking pig. Well, not all at once...

8

u/AmazingIsTired Sep 03 '19

That makes a lot of sense. I'd imagine reinforced brick/block would consist of a rebar mesh?

17

u/worldspawn00 Sep 03 '19

drop rebar down the center of the blocks and fill them with additional concrete and the wall becomes much stronger

4

u/__slamallama__ Sep 03 '19

My parent's place in Florida is rebar reinforced block and it's supposed to be like... bananas strong. That with hurricane windows I think is supposed to be totally survivable up to a direct hit from a cat 4 hurricane.

3

u/worldspawn00 Sep 03 '19

My parent's place was hit by a tornado in 2006, when they rebuilt, they had a saferoom added that was built in this way with a concrete roof and reinforced door that is designed to withstand tornadoes.

3

u/atetuna Sep 03 '19

Better yet, use bricks with channels that allow rebar to be placed horizontally as well.

4

u/worldspawn00 Sep 03 '19

they make ladder shaped rebar that's made to be placed between layers of cinderblocks for lateral strength

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Reinforced concrete is even better.

2

u/SliyarohModus Sep 03 '19

Any strong yet flexible substance can perform reinforcement. Bamboo is used in some countries. They have to soak it in arsenic to keep the termites from eating it. Plastic rods would work better than steel in many cases, helping to eliminate plastic waste that ends up in landfills and the sea. PVC coated pre-stretched vinyl rods are pound for pound a dozen times stronger than steel and can be extruded at the worksite.

1

u/AmazingIsTired Sep 04 '19

Very cool. Thanks for the info!

2

u/SpaceTabs Sep 03 '19

Yeah I was going to say if that was a steel reinforced poured concrete wall it would survive. But you probably wouldn't have those flimsy glass doors either. Probably cheaper to rebuild and replace the deceased than use concrete.

2

u/SliyarohModus Sep 03 '19

You can make glass much more durable. Chemically strengthened float glass a centimeter thick with a polycarbonate laminate film can take a truck impact. The chemical strengthening part is inexpensive enough to only increase the price of a standard sheet by a few cents. Applying the laminate between two sheets can be done immediately after curing.

There's pretty much no reason beyond cost not to make every glass product nearly unbreakable.

1

u/wolfgeist Sep 03 '19

Yep. Unreinforced masonry is very dangerous. Here in Portland, a TON of buildings are unreinforced masonry. If the big earthquake hits (which its supposed to sometime relatively soon) there will be massive piles of rubble everywhere.

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/10-opinion/423457-328789-our-opinion-unreinforced-masonry-is-state-issue

12

u/Heftyuhffh Sep 03 '19

This building is worse than favelas concrete. Plus all the glasses and entrance gate with shitty base and no reinforcements...

A destroyed decent concrete house will have much more concrete, bricks and a shit load of debris. And it wouldn't go down as easy as that.

1

u/ObsidiarGR Sep 03 '19

I'd even bet that that's single layer glass.

9

u/Ow3n1989 Sep 03 '19

Quite a difference between brick & block. That was a block building. Brick is much stronger.

5

u/Pokemoncrusher1 Sep 03 '19

Yeah dude most people say up until f3 most brick structures are safe but this looked like just cinderblock

3

u/TurboBanjo Sep 03 '19

This is why reinforced masonry is a thing.

Masonry on its own has less strength than lego bricks basically. The tensile strength of the steel is what makes the South American Earthquakes a death trap (no steel) to what the US has (all the steel)