ALABAMA – Ten years ago today – on April 27, 2011 – Alabama suffered the largest and costliest tornado outbreak in state history. Of the 62 tornadoes that touched down in Alabama that day, eight were EF4s and three were EF5s, the most powerful possible rating. One EF4 traveled from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham, measuring more than 25 football fields wide and whipping winds at 190 mph, and ultimately left 64 dead and more than 1,000 injured. All told, the day’s tornadoes cost 240 lives statewide and more than 100 others across the South.
The tragedy and devastation of that day remains unmatched, yet tornadoes have continued to pummel Alabama every year since. This year is no exception. Last month was the worst March on record for Alabama with 40 tornadoes, including 25 on March 17th, making it the 6th worst single-day outbreak in state history. One week later, on March 25th, we saw the longest-track March tornado on record, which traveled more than 80 miles. At least five lost their lives.
Today’s anniversary is an important opportunity to admit a difficult truth: Over the last decade, Alabama has not done enough to protect against tornadoes.
While our state doesn’t crack the top ten for total number of annual tornadoes, we are number one in tornado fatalities. This stems from a confluence of three factors. Two of them—geography and weather patterns—cannot be controlled, but the third one can. And that is the strength of our homes and buildings.
For houses in the direct path of powerful tornadoes, it is difficult to prevent major structural damage. The priority must be to keep the strongest winds from lifting your house off its foundation, and to keep lower winds from ripping off your roof. Fortunately, the core path of a tornado, which contains the strongest winds, typically accounts for less than 10% of its overall zone of destruction. The much larger outer areas may still produce 100-plus mile per hour winds, but those can be withstood—if a home is properly constructed or retrofitted.
Alabama knows how to make homes stronger. In the wake of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina in 2004 and 2005, Alabama’s coastal communities adopted stronger building codes, the Department of Insurance and the legislature promoted resilient construction, and homeowners began to demand stronger homes. But farther inland, less has been done to strengthen codes and protect against high wind speeds.
Another unique challenge to storm preparedness and survival is that Alabama has the fifth highest percentage of manufactured (or mobile) homes in the U.S. Also, greater than 80% of these homes are isolated in rural areas rather than in traditional manufactured home communities, increasing their vulnerability during disasters. Data suggest that 46 percent of tornado fatalities in homes over the past ten years were associated with manufactured homes, including 32 percent on April 27, 2011.
So what can be done to protect Alabama against future tornadoes?
In the case of manufactured homes, they must be anchored to the ground using anchorage systems that go beyond the minimum requirements. Better yet, they should be anchored to a concrete foundation.
For new home construction and existing houses, scientists at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) have developed the FORTIFIED Home standard, a voluntary set of beyond-code design, building, and retrofitting steps to strengthen homes against severe weather. It can be found for free online and used by any builder or contractor.
The FORTIFIED standard includes measures to keep your roof attached and protect vulnerable areas, such as the garage door. Homes built to the standard are vastly more durable during extreme weather events. In an IBHS review of the 2011 tornado outbreak in Alabama, more than half of the damage surveyed would be addressed by the standard.. Hurricane Sally last year was the largest real-word test of the standard to-date, striking more than 17,000 newly FORTIFIED homes in coastal Alabama, and aerial images showed these homes largely intact even as neighboring buildings were covered in blue tarps.
Of course, many Alabamians cannot afford to retrofit their homes. Many are also uninsured or underinsured.
Fortunately, it does not fall to homeowners alone to protect against tornadoes. Thanks to some excellent public-private partnerships, Alabama leads the nation in FORTIFIED construction, with more than 21,700 homes that meet the IBHS standard. That number includes more than 2,500 homes that were strengthened with state grants from the Department of Insurance’s Strengthen Alabama Homes program. Further, FEMA’s Taking Shelter from the Storm program has helped more than 4,500 families install tornado safe rooms. Bo Bikes Bama and the Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund, which has helped fund 70 community storm shelters, are additional examples of how partnerships between government, businesses and individuals can make our communities more resilient.
The government should continue to invest in preempting damage through stronger homes, rather than simply spending to clean up after a storm strikes. Communities will save six dollars in wind-related disaster losses for every one dollar spent on mitigation.
Whatever we do, we should do it now. Ten years after we lost 240 lives, Alabamians continue to be killed by tornadoes. Not every home destroyed or life lost is preventable, but many are—and we must resolve to prevent every one we can. Because one thing is for certain: more tornadoes are coming.
