I've got some ideas. For one, many people in tornado-hit towns don't have any formal education in meteorology. They think that, since such destructive tornadoes only hit that place once every X# years on average, their house is not "due" for another for X# years. This isn't how weather works, but they don't know. People in the Oklahoma City area are more experienced, and have more "safe rooms." But Woodward, Oklahoma, which lost 6 to the last tornado, had a previous fatal tornado only in 1947. That apparently is too long ago to teach uneducated people.
It's worse than people being persuaded to build Monolithic Domes. Most don't even want to consider extra-thick rectangular reinforced concrete, which can look like any other ordinary house but will take at least an EF3, possibly EF4.
It gets worse. Joplin, MO, was so eager to facilitate rebuilding after its EF5, that: "It even resisted the temptation to make "safe rooms" a condition of rebuilding." [Wall Street Journal, 4/13/12]
And it gets even worse. A woman in Harrisburg, IL, who was away when her trailer home was destroyed by the tornado in 2/12, was gifted with: another trailer home!
There are stories about buildings, even big non-residential ones, being rebuilt to the exact same plans as the ones which were destroyed.
The difficulty in getting a mortgage for a Monolithic Dome does not apply to ordinary-looking rectangular reinforced-concrete construction which will withstand most tornadoes statistically expected to hit it, ever. It certainly doesn't apply to a "safe room" inside a flimsy new wood balloon-frame house.
Ignorance about weather is necessary for all this to happen, but not sufficient. What lets this happen is a combination of insurance companies, governments at all levels, and government aid which has no teeth. I think government aid is the most likely place to grow some teeth. Safer rebuilding should be a condition of getting aid. I've already appealed to my elected representatives at State & Federal levels to pass some laws to this effect.
