corporate strategy is to cut construction costs until they loose a couple in tornadoes, and then put $100 back into the budget.
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I don’t know. Tornadoes are weird phenomena and not like hurricanes. They strike with such precision, it’s really eerie. Did you notice the cars right outside the Starbucks? I didn’t see even one tremble, much less get blown away.
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The emergency last-minute text makes me wonder, just a little, whether the store manager knew how terrible it was. There are building codes in tornado areas, and I’m not saying this one didn’t meet all the requirements, but I do know I’ve never seen a building fold over like a book leaf before.
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Little known fact: the brick shithouse was invented in Kokomo, Indiana.
http://www.onegentleman.biz/Stories/images%20stories/Cliff-from%20Cheers.jpg
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I did mention that it’s technically possible in my part of Texas. but it’s nothing like living in the parts that get much more tornado activity. I’d live in a bunker if i lived there 
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Now only another 12,217 to go. And that’s just the US.
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most light frame buildings will fold over if they are directly in the path of the tornado
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Yeah, but I’m just saying: Kokomo, IN and Austin, TX are both in an area that’s on the border between 1-5 per 1000 sq miles and 6-10. There’s no difference in prevalence.
With the WiFi knocked out, how am I going to get anything done?
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True. Thus far i haven’t had to experience any so i consider myself fortunate for that.
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Not sure if getting closer to the window is the correct procedure in case of tornado, but what do I know!
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It looks like somebody closing a pop-up book.
That’s probably how the building was constructed anyway.
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Having worked on these outlot buildouts I can tell you some are done right and some are done like this Starbucks - balloon framing, metal truss roof - like a big cardboard box, without the edge strength. Fast 'n Cheap, face brick etc. Glad no one was hurt, bathrooms probably safest interior room, maybe even next to service closets that might be CMU walls.
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Watch a Starbucks get flattened in the same amount of time it took to build it!
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Finally, an argument for the existence of God that I can get behind.
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Exactly. That may have been a shoddily built Starbucks, or it may have just been unlucky.
I’ve seen tornadoes first-hand and they really are capricious in terms of how they dole out damage. One hit my neighborhood when I was in high school. Our house had a little minor damage, but others nearby were completely destroyed – as in the fire department blocking off the roads until they could shut off the natural gas lines. South of us was a trailer park (yes, all the cliches about trailer parks and tornadoes are true!) where one mobile home was missing, just outright-up-up-and-away-gone, but the ones on the lots to either side didn’t have so much as a broken window.
Tornadoes are just freaking weird. Nothing brings home the random nature of the universe’s indifference to man like one of those twisty motherfuckers. In the aftermath of major storms I’ve seen lots of people describe their survival as a miracle, but I’d rather be lucky than righteous any day of the week.
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Hell, in Job, god Okayed a tornado to fuck up Job’s whole family in like five words. Why be righteous when the god’s willing to fuckup his favorite person’s whole life over a bet?
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I know, right? 
Our monkey brains just can’t quit pattern-matching and always insisting that there has to be a reason why things happen. But sometimes life really is just chaos, completely beyond any sense of control. And when you’re intimately, viscerally, confronted with that fact it can be a fine line between exhilaration and existential dread.
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