Why are houses made of wood rather than concrete in the tornado zones in the USA?

Question

Honestly, every year we hear about houses getting destroyed by tornados (and people getting buried under). They seem to be mostly wooden houses. So, why not build concrete houses, atleast in the high risk disaster prone areas?

In: 1750

Answer 1

Wood is much cheaper, faster to build, more sustainable (not that this has been a major consideration until recently), and materials have been traditionally more locally available.

Concrete isn’t automatically tornado-proof. Designing every house to resist a direct hit from a tornado wouldn’t just require a switch in materials, but a total rethinking of the degree of safety we expect from regular houses.