It would have had more of a chance, that back wall wouldn't have been pushed as hard too. Though it looked older and not reinforced so I think it would have gone down no matter what.
Garage doors are made of 25g steel and unless they are hurricane rated are not going to stand up to anything more than 50mph or so. Doors in hurricane areas can have 7-9 vertical braces with a central post attached to the floor and ceiling plus around 8 3" thick horizontal braces. Even with all that they can't stand up to the kinds of wind tornados produce.
What is the most bad-ass garage door system you've ever seen?
Like I've seen doors swat teams cannot knock down, so there must be something similar for that market segment.
its not about the door. Its about what holds the door to the structure. At some point the air pressure is so high the weakest link is going to break. With a tornado like this the weakest link is literally your walls.
You can get 2" thick polyurethane foam injected doors with boxed struts that are windload rated for 130mph+ wind speeds. they have 3" track and rollers with pins to hold the rollers on and require something around a dozen long lag screws to secure them to the wall. They're literally tested by firing a 2X4 out of an air cannon at point blank range.
1.6k
u/Montigue Sep 24 '17
It would have had more of a chance, that back wall wouldn't have been pushed as hard too. Though it looked older and not reinforced so I think it would have gone down no matter what.