Less than 10 days after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida, the state is bracing for another potentially devastating blow from a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, this one a potential Category 3 storm.
Europeans never understand why houses are made out of “flimsy” materials in the US.
The simple answer is that your brick and mortar houses would also be completely destroyed by a hurricane or tornado or earthquake.
They’re just way more expensive and take longer to rebuild.
The scale of natural disasters in the US is and always has been such that we expect buildings to be demolished by nature from time to time. Europe is a very stable place. The US is not.
Having a house that is lighter and stronger per pound than brick makes a lot of sense too. Stick frame houses can twist and shift a considerable amount and recover. Twist a brick house and it crumbles.
We have 3.2+ earthquakes, well, the rate I get alerts I’d estimate every other month on average. 4-5 times a year in a hundred mile radius (what I’ve got alerts set at). You are correct. Brick is used at most as a facade around here.
I would only find out on half of them because folks on reddit, mostly new arrivals to the area, would be freaking out “DID YOU FEEL THAT” and those of us who grew up here would be like “what, a truck?”. Then I set up the google alert and you know.
I mistook a 4.0 for a plane flying over once. I am directly under an air road or whatever ya want to call it, ive seen everything from a B-29 to an Osprey.
It’s an overpressure problem. A tornado causes a sudden vacuum, and the house can’t withstand the pressure. Brick will fly just like wood in these conditions.
Europeans never understand why houses are made out of “flimsy” materials in the US.
The simple answer is that your brick and mortar houses would also be completely destroyed by a hurricane or tornado or earthquake.
They’re just way more expensive and take longer to rebuild.
The scale of natural disasters in the US is and always has been such that we expect buildings to be demolished by nature from time to time. Europe is a very stable place. The US is not.
Having a house that is lighter and stronger per pound than brick makes a lot of sense too. Stick frame houses can twist and shift a considerable amount and recover. Twist a brick house and it crumbles.
Japan builds skyscrapers that resist 8+ magnitude earthquakes. They are not made of sticks.
Neat. Show me one made of bricks or concrete.
A skyscraper made of concrete? Unpossible!
We have 3.2+ earthquakes, well, the rate I get alerts I’d estimate every other month on average. 4-5 times a year in a hundred mile radius (what I’ve got alerts set at). You are correct. Brick is used at most as a facade around here.
We don’t even issue alerts for anything below magnitude 5. Below 4 can barely be felt, we wouldn’t even call that an earthquake here.
I would only find out on half of them because folks on reddit, mostly new arrivals to the area, would be freaking out “DID YOU FEEL THAT” and those of us who grew up here would be like “what, a truck?”. Then I set up the google alert and you know.
I mistook a 4.0 for a plane flying over once. I am directly under an air road or whatever ya want to call it, ive seen everything from a B-29 to an Osprey.
It’s an overpressure problem. A tornado causes a sudden vacuum, and the house can’t withstand the pressure. Brick will fly just like wood in these conditions.