Scratch the shipping container idea.
I live in a place where tornadoes don’t happen, and I think I’ll keep it that way.
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As a native Oklahoman who now lives in San Francisco, I broached this topic with extended family members a few years ago. It seems that the idea of having a basement equates to the idea of having a ‘storm cellar;’ basically a concrete hole partially below ground that was actually much more common in Oklahoma than basements, particularly in rural areas.
The general perception is that storm cellars (and by extension basements) are trouble. They flood (in fact, I remember being dragged to three consecutive neighborhood cellars during an alert as a child to find one that wasn’t flooded), and are the domain of ‘water moccasins’ (no idea what these snakes are officially called) and brown recluse spiders, which are rampant in Oklahoma.
I can’t imagine anyone I know seeing a basement as ‘cheap.’ That doesn’t compute, I’m wondering about the provenance of that statement.
I’d also like to add that the only individual I have a personal connection with who was killed in a tornado, in this case a freak occurrence in Pennsylvania, was killed in a basement when the house crashed through the floor.
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Water moccasins, brown recluse spiders, flooding, and tornadoes…the occasional earthquake in San Francisco must seem like small potatoes to you.
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I’m going to guess that from a pure cost/benefit analysis the extra 5, 10, 20 grand it would cost to build a basement or shelter would be better invested in getting a safer car.
edit: apparently, I don’t know how to spell “would.”
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Well, having lived here my whole life, the problem is that Oklahoma soil is clay-rich. This clay settles and shifts significantly over time, and causes underground structures to suffer. My grandmother had a basement when I was growing up, and we rarely went down into it because shortly after it was built, the house settled, and all of the duct work leading into the basement was destroyed. There was red dirt spilling in from the air ducts near the ceiling. We (and lots of the neighbors) still went down there during tornado threats, but it was never used for anything else.
It’s not just a cultural thing. I’d argue that the culture grew up in response to the clay issue, since older houses where the builders tried to include a basement are so often dicey. When my wife and I were house hunting in 2006, we found a really neat house with lots of space and a basement, but were waved off by a friend who pointed out the cracks in the walls in the basement that indicated flood damage.
It might be a case of new technology or techniques that haven’t been introduced here that could overcome the soil problem, and if that is the case, someone needs to be making a big fuss about it to let folks know.
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