Tornado safe rooms

[Bill in Oregon]

How many of you folks who live in tornado country have a hardened room or shelter in your home? With my daughter in grad school in Ames, Iowa, I worry about stuff like this at night ...

[J Miller]

Worry makes you old before your time.
I live in a cracker box frame house and if a tornado takes it while I'm here me and the cats will go visit Dorothy in Oz.

Joe

[Bill in Oregon]

Well, Joe, you do have a point I guess ...
Out here in Oregon we deal more with earthquakes and volcanoes and tsunami threat, but at least the weather doesn't generally kill us.

[AJMD429]

Our family has owned the same chunk of property since 50 years ago when I was a kid, and during my lifetime alone, four separate times you could see a funnel on the ground from there. The worst time, a tornado crossed our place on a 5 mile long ground-run, and totally flattened and scrambled mature woods in a 300-500 yard wide path, so it's hard NOT to worry about tornados.

Unfortunately we planned to build our barn/workshop first, then live in it while building a 'real' house later, but financial reality (and fertility) hit, and we stayed in the barn/workshop, which is on a slab and very high water-table area.

Our furnace-room is at l'x8'east concrete-block and is not on an outside-wall, but it is only about 6 ft by 8 ft, and has a potentially very hot wood-furnace in the middle of it. In the winter you'd get burned if more than a couple people tried to fit in there, but we rarely get tornados when the weather is cold enough to run the furnace. The other problem is that the chimney is the tallest thing on the house, is metal, and runs right into the room, so one doesn't want to be in there during storms.

If I had to do it over again, I'd build a house with a basement, but on enough of a hill I could assure positive passive drainage, and I'd have a 'tornado' room made of poured concrete. To avoid thinking of it as 'wasted space' I'd make it also serve as a large walk-in gun-safe. (Then my babies would be safe, too ).

A couple friends have created 'tornado rooms' in crawlspaces; one has an unusually-tall 44" crawlspace (don't ask me why) and just reinforced an area there she can access from her garage, and another had a more normal and shallow crawlspace, but deepened one section and made a space just big enough for the parents and three kids to get into with 5-gallon pail emergency kits they can sit on. I don't think either one spent too much money, but I don't know truly how 'tornado-proof' the rooms would be. I'd want concrete-and-rebar on all four sides if possible.

[M. M. Wright]

If anyone needs a shelter, I do! Only 16 tornadoes this spring so far in NE OK but last year there were about 40 by this date. I built this house a few years back and it is framed with oak cut from my and FIL's property. I tried to include a basement but the site has a ledge of flint about 30 inches under the surface that is up to 2 feet thick. My shop building, 100 yards away, has a basement though but takes at least a few minutes of warning to get us there. I need to install a "Fraidy Hole" in the yard here but know it will be difficult digging. I even own my own back-hoe so have to put it down to laziness.

[Hobie]

Flint? Have you gotten any out of there? Photos? I'm thinking knapping material, flintlock necessaries...

[Rusty]

I have a friend that lives in Olathe, KS. He says everyone there has a storm shelter. The town also has some very loud tornado sirens they blow when a storm is in the area.
I keep telling him, I'll take my hurricanes any day.

Is the issue that the place where your daughter is staying doesn't have a shelter?

[Bill in Oregon]

Rusty, I am getting ready to help my daughter buy her first house, and the first thing I do when looking at the real estate ads is check for a basement. However, just having a basement is no guarantee of safety, according to the National Weather Service:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/

That's where I found mention of safe rooms.

[Rusty]

OH OK I misunderstood, I was thinking living in a school dorm.

I know there are companies that build safe rooms some can be pricy. My friend sent me a copy of someone's cell phone video. They had retreated to their basement shelter when the sirens went off. 30 min later when they opened the door from the shelter leading up the steps everything above the shelter was gone. I'm not being a bit funny when I say I can't relate to having to live in an area like that. I don't think my wife could handle it at all.

Sorry Bill I guess you didn't need to know all that. I be worried for my little girl too. Try talking to an agent that you can hire as a buyer broker to work for you and let them know exactly what you're looking for. We'll keep her in out prayers.

[Blaine]

If you have time, the bathtub with a mattress pulled over you is not a bad idea.....

[Streetstar]

I live in Moore, Oklahoma --- site of 2 of the biggest tornadoes in recent history ---- that said, i have an 8" thick reinfoced concrete "safe room" on my back patio area -- it is an integral part of the home's slab foundation and has a steel door and jamb with 4 deadbolts
Mine's an 11 x 7 and i'm in the process of lining it with cedar so i can use it for a sauna room later ---- may as well get in a nice steam while i am ducking the weather

[Marlin32]

Interrior room or closet, better still in a basement interior room.

I would be more worried about her going to school in Ames than tornadoes.
(I am Nebraska grad living in Nebraska and have to work with ISU grads)

[2ndovc]

We get some nasty ones from time to time. Mother's day '10 we had a big one
coming straight at us. First time I'd ever said " Ok, Grab a dog and go downstairs."
The funnel cloud got within 1/2 mile and took a turn out over the lake. Yikes!

I had reinforced one corner of the basement for that very reason.
Hope I never need it but it's there. Quadruple 2x12 main beam, 6x6 posts, etc.

jb

[Streetstar]

If she's in grad school, I assume she;s not living on campus ---- i would have her research the available storm shelter sites in the area in the event one is getting close--plus shelters close to her usual stomping grounds-
I had to hunker down in a YMCA bathroom once 2 years ago when i was caught out away from my house

Was just thinking of this as i was driving up I-35 from San Antonio yesterday afternoon ---- as soon as i hit the Oklahoma state line, i had an "Extreme Alert" flash across my cell phone that there were tornadoes on the ground in my area ---- funny how "they" know where you are enough to send you alerts like that ---

but that's one of my nightmare scenarios -- getting caught out in the truck when one comes whipping across the road

[Bill in Oregon]

Prayers up for any levergunners in Granbury or Cleburne!

[Gaucho Gringo]

Too bad the US government doesn't take tornado safety for it's citizens as seriously as it did for a nuclear attack in the Cold War era. I can remember people digging bomb shelter's and reinforcing basement areas as shelters. My stepfather built a new home in the late 50's and it had a bomb shelter 16 x 20 feet 24 feet below grade under the garage which was 8 feet below grade in the basement. Short of a direct nuclear hit I don't think it could be damaged, but I often wondered how you would get out of it if the house collapsed on top of it. Anyway getting back on topic the government would help you design a safe area in your existing house if you sent them the info on your house. Seems like the same parameters would work for tornado proofing an area of your house, Unfortunately there is no program for that.

[awp101]

Worry makes you old before your time.
I live in a cracker box frame house and if a tornado takes it while I'm here me and the cats will go visit Dorothy in Oz.

That's my take and I've lived in one part or another of Tornado Alley all of my life. There was one a few miles from us at work last year and they got everyone into the break room. After about 5 minutes I went back to my bench and continued working. I wasn't any safer in the break room than I was at the bench and I had work to do.

I've witnessed one rope form and touchdown in a field (I was far enough away and it was going perpendicular to my line of travel so I didn't worry too much about it). The rest I've been close to were at night and there's nothing you can do to track them visually except watch for the sparks from the power lines and transformers going up. Tornadoes after dark make me edgy but there's no point in worrying over them.

There's lots of things you can prepare against. A tornado at night? Not a lot you can do but find a safe-ish spot and pray...

[shooter]

We were under a tornado watch/warning till about 1 am last night. I went to bed at 10. Nothing much I can do if one hits, and there's no use worrying about it. Last year one came through my town and tore up a neighborhood about a mile from my house. Some of my wife's family lives in Granbury where the tornado hit last night, but luckily it missed their house. There's just some things you can't control, and we don't have a storm shelter, so I just don't worry about it much.