High Winds

I was saddened about the death of 4 boy scouts during a recent tornado 1 hour north of Omaha, Nebraska this week. Nebraska is tornado country. I was surprised that although they had a facility for campers that included a mess hall with a big rock chimeny, they had no basement. This is tornado country! And there had been a rash of tornadoes in the midwest for weeks before this camp-out. One scout was interviewed and he said"...we didn't have a chance. I wish they had had some kind of storm shelter."
He was one of the scouts who was uninjured because he jumped into a ditch and layed flat and the tornado passed over him. He didn't have time to run to the mess hall.

Yes, a basement would have been the safe place for these scouts.

Here in the high desert, I don't know of anyone who has a basement. Where I am from, practically everyone has a basement (Wisconsin).

I did a bit of research and found out some interesting things on this topic:

Mobile homes are "very vulnerable to any tornado," said Paul Hebert, head of the National Weather Service forecast office in Miami. "They destroy them. They lift them up and throw them through the air."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has two words of advice for mobile home dwellers facing a tornado: Get out. You're safer in a ditch with your hands over your head than in a mobile home.

The weather service urges evacuations in case of 75 mph winds. The weakest tornadoes can have top winds of 72 mph.

Federal law, passed after Hurricane Andrew struck south Florida in 1992, requires that mobile homes now must be constructed with 2" X 6" lumber, have "tie-downs" and be able to withstand winds of 110 miles per hour on the coast and 100 mph inland. However, 90% of those 800,000 Florida mobile homes were built before that law was enacted. If they were built after 1976, the specs call for them to withstand 90 mph winds. If they were built before 1976, there were no rules at all!
Some mobile home parks have shelters for residents in case of hurricane or tornado, but many don't. At least one state has attempted to pass legislation that requires mobile home parks to have a communal shelter available to residents, but the legislation has been blocked by those within the mobile home industry there.

http://www.tornadoproject.com/past/pastts98.htm