When a town is destroyed by a tornado, what happens to the bank vault?When a town, such as Greensburg, Kansas, is totally destroyed by a tornado, you never see photos with the bank vault standing there amid the rubble. Just wondering if anyone has seen a vault after a bank was destroyed. | |
Most bank vaults should survived a direct hit from a tornado. I have not seen or heard of one that did not.
Not specifically, but the early pictures right after a tornado (which are the ones that you most often see), are taken while there is a ton of debris all over the place. I think it would be hard to pick out a bank vault from the mounds and piles of debris in general. How could you tell if there was a bank vault beneath a 12 foot pile of lumber, drywall, bricks, cars and such?
If you saw pictures from a couple of weeks later, after much of the loose debris was gone, houses and damaged buildings had been torn down and carted away, then you would be able to see the lone bank vault still standing.
There was a powerful tornado that hit Topeka, Kansas in 1966, it destroyed a bank and people found canceled checks from that bank all the way to St. Joseph, Missouri. The vaults should be built like a safe-room or at least underground but they aren't as far as I know.
Vaults are made airtight and made of steel and other hard metals. A town being destroyed means that wooden, brick and other structures have been knocked down. I doubt a tornado would be able to just open a metal vault, though it could seriously leave a bank's security posture in jeopardy.
You said "totally destroyed". You should not expect anything from a totally destroyed place. No matter Whether it is money or paper.
