(CNN) -- It's one of the most familiar pieces of advice from authorities to people in the path of a tornado: Get into your basement. Yet few homes in the Oklahoma City area have them -- even though that state is hit by far more powerful tornadoes than most others. "Probably less than one tenth of one percent" of the houses in Moore are built with basements, said Mike Hancock, president of Basement Contractors in Edmond, Oklahoma. "There's just such a misconception that you cannot do it."
Why? Hancock cited the area's high groundwater levels and heavy clay as among the reasons some people believe -- wrongly, he said -- that basements are tough to construct.