How to tell if your house could be destroyed by a tornado

Thinking about moving to a new city on the beach? Or maybe you’re moving abroad, for adventure or work?

Before you relocate, you can now check the likelihood your new home could destroyed by a tornado, earthquake or host of other natural disasters.

A new tool released by the World Bank, which uses open-source data to determine the risk of natural disaster in a particular area, allows citizens to find the risk in their city or state, or in another country. The global price tag of such events has quadrupled in recent years, costing around $200 billion a year when communities are flattened by gale-force winds or flooded by swelling rivers and seas.

Just last week, a state of emergency was declared in 15 counties in Oklahoma when a swath of storms produced 11 confirmed tornadoes, 8 of which hit the state. Two people were killed, and twisters were also reported in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas and Arkansas.

The World Bank project aims to empower citizens with knowledge about the conditions in which they chose to build their homes and businesses so they can diminish the risk their lives will be destroyed by a future storm.

“Understanding the potential for such events will mean that we can make our roads, hospitals, schools, agriculture etc. more resilient to natural hazards and climate change,” the World Bank said.

Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak said Monday that his state needs stronger building codes to prevent such damage from natural disasters.

“Our statewide building codes need to improve. We need to have homes that can withstand winds up to about 135 to 140 miles per hour,” Doak told KOCO, noting that building such storm-resistant structures costs more. “Oklahomans I think would gladly pay that extra one or two percent more to make sure their home can withstand that type of wind.”

The U.S. as a whole is at high risk for seven major natural disasters: earthquakes, cyclones, coastal floods, river floods, volcanoes, landslides and water scarcity. There was no data reported for the eighth disaster measured by the tool, tsunami.

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 6:06 PM with the headline "How to tell if your house could be destroyed by a tornado."