Apr 13, 2020
StEER Product Release
EARR for March 2020 Nashville Tornadoes Released
StEER has released its Early Access Reconnaissance Report (EARR) for the March 3 2020 Tornadoes in Nashville, TN. The report can be accessed at DesignSafe:
Wood, R. Roueche, D. Cullum, K. Davis, B. Gutierrez Soto, M. Javadinasab Hormozabad, S. Liao, Y. Lombardo, F. Moravej, M. Pilkington, S. Prevatt, D. Kijewski-Correa, T. DJIMA, W. Robertson, I. (2020) “Early Access Reconnaissance Report (EARR)”, in StEER - 3 March 2020 Nashville Tornadoes. DesignSafe-CI. https://aub.ie/steer_tornado_03032020
This extensive report highlights the FAST’s repeated observations of highly vulnerable structural details that were already identified in multiple previous post-tornado reports. These included schools with a lack of safe sheltering options, big box buildings with little load path redundancy suffering complete collapses with high life safety risk, and mobile and manufactured homes in which the anchorage is the first structural element to fail. Most concerning from this tornado, FAST observed the majority of modern, code-compliant single-family home construction with glaring deficiencies in the load path to the foundation.
Yesterday and today’s outbreak of fatal tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina only underscores further the grave consequences of not incorporating tornado design provisions in current codes, repeatedly accepting dozens of fatalities and hundreds of damaged buildings in a single seasonal event. Given the availability of engineering knowledge, it is imperative to ask why this knowledge is not accompanied by the will to act.
We encourage the community to continue to use the #steer Slack channel to share reactions to this EARR and information on the latest tornado outbreak in the southeastern United States. StEER’s level down response due to COVID-19 (see https://www.steer.network/covid-19) implies that a FAST will not be assembled for this event; however, if any StEER member wishes to lead the authorship of an Event Briefing or Preliminary Virtual Reconnaissance Report (PVRR) for the tornadoes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina on April 12-13, please directly message StEER Director @Tracy Kijewski-Correa in Slack.