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[Fruit Pie Jones]

Originally Posted by Dave

Sorry in advance for the stupid question, but I've noticed that it's a common thing in the USA to use (and maybe abuse) wood when building houses. At least this is what I see from your pictures and watching the news.
Shouldn't it better to use cement and bricks in those areas affected by those natural disasters? I mean, it couldn't avoid the problem but maybe it would be safer.

Is it a matter of costs and time or there's a particular reason behind the choice?

We do use a lot of wood in home construction over here, and that's probably due in large part (as Eagle of Fire says) to the abundance of wood in our country. (We don't have as much as we once did, but our forestry folks have a much better grasp on sustainability now.) The interior walls of most homes here are framed with wood, even if the exterior is made from something else. That's the case with our house: it may not be evident from the pictures, but this was actually a steel-framed house. The steel frame was bolted directly onto the concrete slab, and wood was used for framing the interior walls, as well as the floor of the second story. (The second and fourth pictures show some of the steel structural members.)

It didn't matter in this case, though; the tornado was simply too strong. The National Weather Service has re-rated it as EF-5, the highest rating on the scale, although wind speeds surely varied somewhat along its 75-mile path. (This was the first EF-5 tornado in Oklahoma since May 3, 1999, which is a date that everyone around here knows well.) Nothing short of an underground bunker could have withstood it. Some people here actually do build their homes underground, although it's pretty rare.