Firearms After a Natural Disaster

8

'88Scrat

New member
This is something that I wondered about after watching a special on Netflix about the Joplin tornado.

What is supposed to happen to all firearms found in the debris after an event like a tornado or earthquake?

It has special meaning to me because I'm from Andover, Kansas originally. On April 26,1991 an EF-5 went through the middle of Andover. That 1/2 mile wide black monster missed my house by less then 4 blocks (they really do sound like a freight train) and I was left with a new found respect for them. Until the Greensburg tornado in 2007 it was the most destructive tornado in Kansas history.

I have well over $10,000 invested in my firearms. If (God forbid) something like that were to happen to me I would not know what to do. Anyone know the procedure?

EDIT: Wasn't sure if this belonged here or in the Legal Forum.
 
The answer is it depends on the disaster, the jurisdiction(s), if the owner is known to be alive and ambulatory, if the weapon is legal, and any safety pronouncements.

Generically, A high level safety sweep provides a clear signal for responders to enter the area. Then, Rescue crews are primarily interested in finding live persons and usually skip tangible items. Recovery crews usually come in next and remove bodies. Building inspectors and other safety officials typically follow. If there is something overt and clearly a threat to public safety (your handguns, gasoline tanks, drugs, reminant leaking gas lines, munitions, toxic materials, energized wires from mains or generator, et al) those will be flagged or removed.

This example is highly dependent upon the disaster plan in the local area.
Your disaster response plan is a public document you can read (if your a plans geek :)
 
A large gun safe is very heavy. It's unlikely that a tornado would move a gun safe very far. A friends home was destroyed by the recent Moore, OK tornado. Under the debris there stood his big gun safe still bolted to the concrete floor.
 
I assure you that a tornado is more than capable of giving a gun safe a ride through the air if hit directly.

I had an employee whose car was snatched from his garage and found in a tree two hundred yards away.
 
I’ve got no real experience in this matter but hey, it’s the internets right? So I'll play.

If I was in the area with all the debris and found a gun I would look around and if the owner was there I'd tell him to take care of it. If the ‘authorities’ were right there I'd tell them about it. If I was by myself I’d take it to the ‘authorities’ because IMhO I’m safer picking up a gun than a lot of people that might be going through the area and the chances of me firing the gun accidentally or on purpose are much lower than many of the others. In other words, I would not leave it on the ground where anyone else could pick it up and possibly have an accident with it.

If my house were destroyed by a tornado I would check with the ‘authorities’ to see if anyone had turned in my firearms.
 
An automobile is a lot less dense than a gun safe. A typical automobile today weighs between 1500 and 2500 pounds. It's probably 6 feet wide, 15 feet long, and averages 4 feet in height (for the body itself, not height from the ground). That's 360 cubic feet. If you use 2500 pounds for the weight (which might be on the heavy side today), that's a density of 6.9 pounds per cubic foot.

A gun safe starts off with a weight of 500 to 1000 pounds empty. A typical handgun weighs about 2 to 3 pounds each, and rifles (if you have "classic" rifles with wood furniture) are probably anywhere from 6 to 10 pounds each. Measure your gun safe to get the outside dimensional volume, then add up the weight of the safe plus the weight of the guns and whatever else you have in it. I'll be it comes out a lot denser than an automobile.

And autos are not typically bolted to concrete slabs.
 
Make those kilograms instead of pounds, and the car weights would be more accurate.
Most modern cars are well over 3000 lbs and suvs are over 4000.
But they will fly a lot better than a safe.
 
Found a rifle in one of the homes we were working on (gutting down to the studs) for Katrina relief. We contacted the homeowner who happened to be in the area and he came and got it immediately. Not sure if that was proper protocol with the New Orleans LE community, but it was with our relief organization. I just know the guy was real glad we contacted him.

Lou
 
And that's the way it should be.
Return it to the rightful owner, or at least someone who lived there.
It's not a mystery whose house it was, was it?
 
g.willikers said:
Most modern cars are well over 3000 lbs and suvs are over 4000.
Click to expand...
No, they're not.

My first new car when I graduated college was a 1966 rambler American. It had a curb weight of 2400 pounds. When I came home after Vietnam I bought an AMC Javelin, curb weight 3200 pounds. Since then, cars have generally gotten smaller and lighter, as part of the quest for fuel economy.

A Jeep Patriot 4WD weighs in at 3248 pounds. A Grand Cherokee is 3369 pounds curb weight. A Volkswagen Jetta is around 3200 pounds. A Honda Civic runs 2500 to 2700 pounds, depending on trim level. Honda Accord runs 3000 to 3200 pounds, depending on trim level.

You can certainly find some larger SUVs that tip the scales at over 4,000 pounds, but those are at the high end of the curb weight spectrum, not the average or median of what most people have in their garages and driveways.
 
I had an employee whose car was snatched from his garage and found in a tree two hundred yards away.
Click to expand...

Lots more surface area for the wind to grab hold of with a car. Yes, a tornado would move a safe but it would take SIGNIFICANTLY more wind to move it the same distance.
 
Rather than worrying about the aerodynamic properties of one's safe, it may be more important to consider its location. Chances are that you'll be taking shelter in the basement if you're in the path of a tornado; one that's not powerful enough to move a safe may well be powerful enough to do significant damage to your home. In that scenario, do you really want a dense, half-ton-plus object above your head, when the most likely direction for it to move is down?

This seems a good reason to put one's safe in the basement, where it will also be least likely to leave the premises in a bit of wind... :rolleyes:
 
Joplin in May of 2011

I was surveying the damage of the EF-5 Joplin monster tornado that totaled my daughter's car. One of the images that stood out to me was when I went by the local Burger King. The store had been wiped from the face of the earth. All that remained were the foundation slab and the Play land play set that was bolted to the ground. Even the fiberglass slide was still fully intact.

So, if you have a gun safe bolted to a sturdy foundation (not a wooden floor above a crawl space) I would expect to find your gun safe still dutifully protecting your guns and solidly attached to terra firma even if the remainder of your house were gone.

As for your car, since it is not bolted to the ground, it can become a wonderful flying missile to take out light poles (like my daughter's did).

See it here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=206353929400655&set=a.204091599626888.46193.100000781493633&type=3&theater

BK Play Set: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=206353929400655&set=a.204091599626888.46193.100000781493633&type=3&theater#!/photo.php?fbid=10150273485415039&set=a.10150273474970039.372382.636615038&type=3&theater
 
A safe safe: Weight > 1 lb / sq inch surface area, or big anchor bolts

If the question is what can a tornado pick up, it's easy to calculate that weight.
Wikipedia notes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_records) yes I know some don't like WP) the biggest verified pressure drop observed in a tornado was 2.93 inHg. That corresponds to right at 1 psi.
Multiply the area of the largest side if your safe, car or dog by 1 psi, which gives you a very basic 2592 pounds of lift for a 72" x 36" large safe. This is the lifting force, based on historically observed maximums.
Your 7' wide by 20' long SUV, even fully loaded to max GVW of 7500 lbs is no match for 20,160 pounds of lift.
And Rover, at 80 lbs, would be no match to a severe tornado. Neither would any one of us.
So to stay on the gun related track, a hefty safe, or one well anchored, may be a refuge for your weapons, your car is not.
 
I have a pretty heavy 48 gun safe, full of guns, quite heavy, plus the fact its anchored to a concrete slab in my shop.

I really doubt its gonna blow a way.
 
If you have bolted down your heavy safe, it's probably not going anywhere. In fact, a very safe spot to be yourself is right against the safe, at least if the house is going to fall down. The safe will prevent debris from falling to the floor and crushing you. It's called the Safety Triangle, you fit in the triangle between the safe and debris.
 
From what I've seen on TV concerning tornado damaged towns. Much of the housing in the S/W don't have basements. So the need to bolt or fasten a safe to a cement floor/slab would be almost a necessity. Where a problem may come to light is using the correct fasteners to accomplish the task. My safe just sits in a corner. The only thing I rely on is its overall weight to keep it there. No moving dolly will one ever find sitting in my garage either. +1 for National Security safes from this fellow.

S/S
 
Tornado seems like another good reason to have a safe for your fireams and other valuables. Bolted down in concrete, I doubt the safe would move an inch. It might well be all that is left standing in a home after an EF-5 tornado.
 
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