What is safer in case of a tornado?

Question

Which is safer: The crawl space under my house, or an interior bathroom? I think the crawl space would be safer, but my husband thinks that an interior bathroom would be. We live on the east side of Colorado Springs, so the chance of a tornado is small, but still there, so I want to be prepared.

Answer 1

Over the years, NOAA and other government agencies have changed their minds about what is the safest thing to do in event of a tornado. Years ago, a woman took her children down to the basement of their house and placed them in the Northeast corner of the basement where NOAA had told them they would be the safest. (This was in North Carolina, by the way.) The basement wall collapsed, killing them all. Her husband was caught out in the open, driving home. He survived.
In 1980, 13 tornadoes hit Grand Island, Nebraska, leaving much of the town looking like a war zone. One woman who survived a direct hit on a motel did so because, as she went out to her car, a stranger, a man, grabbed her, pushed her into the motel, pushed her into the bathtub, threw himself on top of her and pulled a mattress on top of himself. When the tornado had passed, the motel was gone; the mattress was still on top of the man on top of the woman in the bathtub.
As to your specific circumstances, the more support there is from walls, such as in a typical bathroom or closet, the less likely that the house would collapse upon you. Inside the bathtub with a mattress on top of you provides quite a bit of protection. The best protection would be the old-style bomb shelter or root shelter.

Answer 2

A crawl space would be dangerous because if the house is hit by a tornado, it would collapse on top of you. The bathroom is defintely safer, especially if it's a bathroom on the bottom floor with a tub. Take a mattress off a bed and place it on top of you and sit in the tub to protect against a tornado. The house is less likely to collapse in a dangerous way on top of you and the mattress would protect against debris.

Answer 3

Tornado Safety The following links are a must see

The lower you can get in a house the better and the furthest you can get from the extierior.

Don't be fooled Tornado's have hit every state in the union including Hawaii and Alaska

TORNADO SAFETY LINKS
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/edu/safety/tornadoguide.html

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/severewx/safety.php

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/papers/overpass.html

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/severewx/safety.php#tornado

There is a wealth of information on tornado safety via the National Weather Service home page http://www.nws.noaa.gov