Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The World’s Unluckiest Man

In the fall of 1988, a tornado descended on the city of Moore, Oklahoma and in the process damaged the home of Donald Staley, a local building contractor. The following spring on May 3, 1999, Mr. Staley stepped out of his garage only to see another massive tornado once again approaching his recently repaired home. This storm ripped the roof off of his house; the storm was determined to be a F5 tornado whose winds ranged between 261 and 318 mile per hour. This storm became the single most destructive storm in the United States to date as it was responsible for damaging or destroying 10,000 homes in the Oklahoma City area.

Following his second loss, Mr. Staley relocated to a new house across town, only to have disaster strike once again. On May 8, 2003, a tornado completely leveled his third house while he huddled in a concrete safe room.

Is Donald Staley the world’s unluckiest man? It’s difficult to say for sure, but the odds of having your home destroyed three times by tornadoes in a six year period are on the order of 1 in 3 billion chance!

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