Surviving Natural Disasters

speaking of all this...if a rollercoaster, say TTD, for example, fell over, does the park have insurance or a warranty from the manufacturer to rebuild/repair it?

All parks have insurance on there rides.

One of the park ops I was talking to one day said there room is right outside Power Tower and she said to her roommate "Wouldnt it be cool if Power Tower fell over" and she said it really freeked her roomie out.

It would take a much stronger tornado than the ones typical to Northern Ohio to topple any of the tall steel structures. They're designed with a wind load capability of 95mph and since F0 or F1 tornados typically hit Northern Ohio, those rides are probably safe. If an F-2 or larger tornado hits the park, a lot more than rollercoasters are going to be damaged.

I suspect that about the best thing you could do is head for low ground and hope.

Very few buildings anywhere could survive a direct hit from a strong tornado. The forces are simply so great that it isn't practical to design for them. Some buildings are built with small areas as storm shelters that are designed to survive, but short of a block house at Cape Kennedy, entire buildings are unlikely to survive a direct hit.

Another major factor is moving people to the shelter. 5 people in a house can get to a storm shelter in a matter of seconds. Thousands of people at a busy amusement park could probably never move to a shelter before the tornado had already hit.

CP has raydars and can alart everyone if the weather is that bad, they will close down the park. It's not like they arnt prepared.

Where are you from justcazisaidso? In the part of the country where tornados hit, not only do we spell things correctly and punctuate accurately, we also know that tornados can hit in a blink of an eye. Sure, modern weather radar can detect the possibility of tornados, but we still rely on physical sightings to confirm a tornado. If the park closed down and made everyone take shelter everytime a potential tornado was sighted, they'd lose credibility in that department much like the boy who cried wolf. *** Edited 7/20/2004 5:40:52 PM UTC by ucdaap42***

...."sited"?! ;-)