Published: April 13, 2020
A damaged home is knocked into a road by a powerful storm that struck Upson County, Georgia, overnight.
An almost fully intact home blown onto a Georgia roadway during severe storms in the South overnight has been cleared from the road.
Heavy winds lifted a home onto State Route 74 in central Georgia, between Yatesville and Thomaston. The winds pushed the entire home off of its foundation and several feet onto the roadway almost perfectly intact.
There was no one inside the house, officials said.
An anchor from Georgia’s Channel 2 found the house early Monday morning in Upson County. He said in his 30 year career, he’s never seen anything like this before. The owner hasn't been identified.
Authorities struggled with how to remove the house, local media reported.
The Georgia State Patrol said they are assisting the Upson County Sheriff’s Office with debris cleanup on the roadway in that area, including the house. A tweet from GDot West, Georgia Department of Transportation’s District 3, shows the house being removed using a tractor.
Georgia DOT crews are all over west central GA this morning, removing trees and power lines from highways - even this house on GA 74 in Upson County, between Thomaston and Yatesville. Watch for our teams and equipment wherever you drive - as always #DriveAlert #ArriveAliveGA!
52 people are talking about this
According to David B. Roueche, an assistant of structural engineering at Auburn University, the construction of the house makes this quite common. As he tweeted, “This failure mechanism is always remarkable, but is unfortunately quite common, and doesn't usually require very high wind speeds (relatively speaking) to occur.”
The engineering professor, who holds a doctorate in structural engineering from the University of Florida, explained that this sort of thing can happen when “the weakest link in the structural load path is at the foundation and is a terrible life safety risk.”
Many mobile and manufactured homes, like this one, “rely completely upon the weight of the home to resist uplift forces and sliding forces. The stronger the uplift, the lower the sliding resistance becomes.”
Using public records, Roueche ascertained the location of the home, that it was built in 1952 and its distance from the roadway. He explained that these types of homes built in the 1950s “are just resting on the brick masonry, relying on gravity.”
The severe weather exploited that.
“Mobile/manufactured homes are a higher life safety risk in part because of how much lighter they are,” he tweeted.
The Upson County Sheriff has confirmed there were no local fatalities from the overnight storms that moved across the state.
At least 22 people have been killed as severe weather and strong tornadoes continued to slash across the South on Monday, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and leaving more than a million customers without electricity.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
No comments:
Post a Comment