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Lubbock Tornado Jfcttonal Bureau of Standards Library, E-oi Mmin B(dg MAR 2 4 1971 A UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE NBS TECHNICAL NOTE 558 PUBLICATION AA LUBBOCK TORNADO: A Survey of Building Damage in an Urban Area U.S. EPARTMENT OF MERCE „° National ' Ji Bureau W of W andards (UTIONAL BUREAU Of STANDWCS UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Maurice H. Stans, Secretary NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS • Lewis M. Branscomb, Director » V - o c 4. NBS TECHNICAL NOTE 558 ISSUED MARCH 1971 Nat. Bur. Stand. (U.S.), Tech. Note 558, 38 pages (Mar. 1971) CODEN: NBTNA Lubbock Tornado: A Survey of Building Damage in an Urban Area N. F. Somes, R. D. Dikkers, and T. H. Boone Building Research Division Institute for Applied Technology National Bureau of Standards Washington, D.C. 20234 \ * '"«u t>« NBS Technical Notes are designed to supplement the Bureau's regular publications program. They provide a means for making available scientific data that are of transient or limited interest. Technical Notes may be listed or referred to in the open literature. For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C, 20402. (Order by SD Catalog No. C 13.46:558). Price 50 cents. Abstract The Building Research Division of the National Bureau of Standards' Institute of Applied Technology sent a three-man team to investigate the damage to build- ings and other structures caused by the tornado which struck Lubbock, Texas, on May 11, 1970. The team members—the authors of this report—carried out photo- graphic surveys on the ground and from a helicopter on the days of May 14, 15, and 16, 1970. The report is based largely on data gathered during this period but includes some data provided by other agencies and individuals whose assistance is acknowledged in the report. The report concludes that current good practice in the design and construction of buildings and mobile homes would have greatly reduced the damage observed at Lubbock. It also notes that natural disasters provide full-scale tests of buildings and urges the development of performance criteria with respect to wind loads for certain building elements. Key words: Anchorage; building performance; glazing; hailstones; masonry; mobile homes; roofs; structural engineering; wind load. Contents Page Introduction I Meteorological Events 5 Path of Tornado 6 Statistics 9 Damage in Zone 1 1 | Damage in Zone 2 23 Damage in Zone 3 25 Damage in Zone 4 31 Discussion 32 General Conclusions 33 Acknowledgements 34 Appendices 35 in a Introduction On the late evening of May 11, 1970, Lubbock 1 and 2. Lubbock Municipal Airport is located to Texas, experienced the worst tornado storm in its the northeast of the city. history. The storm affected most of the northeast Lubbock's trade is concerned with cotton and quarter of the city, leaving a trail of deaths, injuries, grain and thus the city has a great many structures structural damage and a temporary disruption to for the storage of these products. It also has a large normal life. plant for the production of earth-moving equipment. Lubbock lies on the South High Plains of west In recent years there has been increased construction Texas. This region has a high incidence of torna- of high-rise buildings in the center of the city; the does, being part of the broad tornado belt which ex- tallest structure is the 20-story Great Plains Life tends from North Dakota to Texas and from the Building which houses commercial and professional foothills of the Rocky Mountains to Ohio. Torna- offices. does are localized in their effects and because a very Most Federal Government buildings in the city are small percentage of the total area of this tornado leased with the exception of the new Post Office belt is urbanized, the probability of what happened Facility and the eight-story Federal Office Building at Lubbock is low. Nevertheless, it did happen, and which is under construction. because it involved such a wide range of building The great majority of houses in the city is of one- structures, it served to offer one of the few large- story construction, and because of a high water scale lessons for engineers and architects on how table, few have basements. buildings perform in these extreme storm conditions. The building code currently enforced by the City 1 The Building Research Division of the National of Lubbock is the 1964 Uniform Building Code [l]. Bureau of Standards' Institute for Applied Tech- nology sent a three-man team to investigate the dam- Frequency of Tornadoes age to buildings and other structures. The team Thorn has given account of members—the authors of this report—carried out [2] an the recorded photographic surveys on the ground and from a heli- frequency of tornadoes in the United States. For copter on the days of May 14, 15 and 16. This re- this purpose he divided the country into approxi- port is based largely on data gathered during this mately square areas, the sides of which correspond period but includes some data provided by other to one degree of latitude and longitude respectively. the latitude of Lubbock, this agencies and individuals whose assistance is ac- At square corresponds knowledged in this report. to an area of approximately 59 miles by 67 miles with the longer side being north-south. Within the City of Lubbock ten-year period from 1953 through 1962, approxi- mately 23 tornadoes were reported for this area— Lubbock is a city of approximately 150,000 per- mean annual frequency of 2.3. sons and extends over an area roughly rectangular and measuring 10 miles in the east-west direction Direction of Tornado Rotation and 8'/2 miles in the north-south direction. It lies 115 miles due south of Amarillo, the nearest large Melarangno [3] points out that the direction of city, at a meeting point of highways, railroads and the tornado vortex is usually counterclockwise in airlines and is the major trade center for a large part 1 Numbers in brackets indicate the literature references at of west Texas and eastern New Mexico; note figures the end of this report. — - . 1 — — ._/ "i — I ° "° 1 i m • z i 00 i. < * ./ 1 3 ^ i / ° lo • U «»1 O Z> a: v'x "! I _o \ a QQ / Z> -° QQ 'C in i _ CO * ^^S o>\ < E « c \ X i < a \ lO \ / * CN V •O >/ o ^NS o> ' i "* / W» \ ® CD i 00 ^* o CQ \ «/> = a> 4) y' - \ 3 ao i \ • o / (!) b. 3 <—.. 3 OS / a> o 0) CC Li. — -•— j " — < — "J r -' LU -, L Q / Z u:t2 \ < CD \ C/3 I E c z O CD s aCD z < - E / • o o z I • • > • u< O < y o X o 3 0) ) plan in the northern hemisphere because of the de- States. Storms causing large hailstones occur mostly flection due to the Coriolis force. Tornadoes, how- in the states located between the Appalachian and ever, have revolved in a clockwise direction in the Rocky Mountains. hemisphere on a number of occasions. northern Surface temperatures are generally above freezing Flora [4] mentions a study by J. P. Finley that was when hail occurs, and it occurs in Texas in the published in the American Meteorological Journal in spring, early summer and late fall. 1890. Finley reported that in a study made of 500 conditions that produce thunderstorms with tornadoes that occurred in the United States, only The sufficient intensity to develop damaging hail are 29 were found to have had a clockwise direction of ( 1 air aloft cooler than normal, and moist rotation. Based on the damage observed in Lub- (2) warm air the surface of the earth, strong winds bock, the tornado had a counter clockwise rotation. near (3) aloft to assist in developing vertical motion, (4) means of lifting the warm air to cause updrafts such Hailstones as frontal lifting, and (5) suitably cool air tempera- Hailstorms are generally the outgrowth of thun- ture below the cloud formation so that the hail does derstorms and usually contain relatively small hail- not melt before reaching the earth. These conditions stones. Thus they inflict little if any damage on cause a rising column of air or updraft chimney that buildings. Large hailstones (exceeding 1 inch in is roughly cylindrical in shape and topped by a half diameter) are indeed damaging, however, and stones spherical cap. The updraft velocities in thunder- of such size have been reported in many parts of storms have exceeded 100 feet per second and the the world as well as in the United States. distance these updrafts travel, or the height of the A review of the literature on hail formation indi- storm, affects the size of the hail that is discharged. cates that the formation mechanism is not completely This means that the longer the path length avail- understood. At the same time, it is generally ac- able for growth of hailstorms, the larger they may cepted that the majority of the hailstorms in the grow. The storm cloud formations reported in the United States result from warm moist tropical air area of Lubbock on the evening of May 1 1 reached from the Gulf area moving into the Midwestern a height of 55,000 feet. Meteorological Events The regional meteorology in west Texas on May Unit. In the next few minutes the local radio 1 1 is detailed in Appendix A. system carried this message until the system was silenced by the tornado as it touched the ground. Lubbock Weather Watch With a loss of electric power in the area, the Lubbock Weather Bureau switched over to its The following information was compiled from emergency power system.
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