More families building their own tornado shelters

In this photo from April 27, Betty Har­ry­man and her daugh­ter Linda Har­ry­man stand by the safe room they installed in the garage of their new home fol­low­ing last years tor­nado in Joplin, Mo. Har­ry­man, 76, was in a Joplin hos­pi­tal about to have open-heart surgery when the twister hit. (Cour­tesy | Betty Harryman)

HOLBROOK MOHR

JIM SALTER

PHILLIP RAWLS

Asso­ci­ated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — When deadly twisters chewed through the South and Mid­west in 2011, thou­sands of peo­ple in the killers’ paths had nowhere to hide. Now many of those fam­i­lies are tak­ing an unusual extra step to be ready next time: adding tor­nado shel­ters to their homes.

A year after the storms, sales of small res­i­den­tial shel­ters known as safe rooms are surg­ing across much of the nation, espe­cially in hard-hit com­mu­ni­ties such as Mont­gomery and Tuscaloosa in Alabama and in Joplin, Mo., where twisters laid waste to entire neighborhoods.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers can barely keep up with demand, and some states are offer­ing grants and other finan­cial incen­tives to help pay for the added pro­tec­tion and peace of mind.

Tom Cook didn’t need con­vinc­ing. When a 2008 tor­nado bar­reled toward his home in rural south­west Mis­souri, Cook, his wife and their teenage daugh­ter sought refuge in a bath­room. It wasn’t enough. His wife was killed.

Cook moved to nearby Joplin to rebuild, never imag­ing he would con­front another mon­ster twister. But he had a safe room installed in the garage just in case.

On May 22, Cook and his daugh­ter hud­dled inside the small steel enclo­sure while an EF-5 tor­nado roared out­side. They emerged unharmed, although the new house was gone.

“It was blown away com­pletely — again,” he said. “The only thing stand­ing was that storm room.”

Gen­er­a­tions ago, homes across America’s Tor­nado Alley often came equipped with storm cel­lars, usu­ally a small con­crete bunker buried in the back­yard. Although some of those remain, they are largely relics of a bygone era. And base­ments are less com­mon than they used to be, leav­ing many peo­ple with no refuge except maybe a bath­tub or a room deep inside the house.

The renewed inter­est in shel­ters was stirred by last year’s stag­ger­ing death toll — 358 killed in the South and 161 dead in Joplin. So far this year, more than 60 peo­ple have per­ished in U.S. twisters.

Safe rooms fea­ture thick steel walls and doors that can with­stand winds up to 250 mph. They are typ­i­cally win­dow­less, with no light fix­tures and no elec­tric­ity — just a small, rein­forced place to ride out the storm. Costs gen­er­ally range from $3,500 to $6,000.

Sizes vary, but most hold only a few peo­ple. They can be bolted to the floor of a garage or custom-fitted to squeeze into a small space, even a closet. Some are so small occu­pants have to crawl inside. A few are buried in the yard like the old storm shel­ters of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Before the twister dev­as­tated Joplin, the Neosho, Mo., safe room man­u­fac­turer called Twister Safe had four employ­ees. Now it has 20.

“Busi­ness has prob­a­bly quadru­pled, at least,” owner Enos Davis said. “We’re sell­ing 400 to 500 a year now, com­pared to maybe 100 before.”

Twister Safe’s spike in busi­ness is even more impres­sive in Mis­souri, which does not offer grant money for safe rooms, opt­ing to use its share of fed­eral dis­as­ter money for com­mu­nity shelters.

Missouri’s choice spot­lights a debate in states seek­ing bet­ter tor­nado pro­tec­tion: Is dis­as­ter aid bet­ter spent on safe rooms in indi­vid­ual homes or on larger pub­lic shel­ters designed to pro­tect hun­dreds or thou­sands of people?

The down­side of pub­lic shel­ters is get­ting there. Even with improve­ments in twister pre­dic­tion, ven­tur­ing out into a rapidly brew­ing storm is perilous.

“I wouldn’t get my fam­ily into a car and run that risk,” Joplin Assis­tant City Man­ager Sam Anselm said. “If you have the oppor­tu­nity to put some­thing in your house, that’s what we would encour­age folks to do.”

In Jan­u­ary, more than 50 peo­ple sought safety in a dome-shaped pub­lic shel­ter as a tor­nado ripped through Maplesville, Ala. No one was hurt.

“The shel­ter did what it was sup­posed to do,” Mayor Aubrey Latham said.

Since 2005, 31 com­mu­nity shel­ters have been built in Mis­souri using FEMA funds, and nine oth­ers are under con­struc­tion, accord­ing to Mike O’Connell of the Mis­souri State Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency.

That num­ber is about to grow. Joplin vot­ers ear­lier this month approved a $62 mil­lion bond issue that will be com­bined with insur­ance money and fed­eral aid to build storm shel­ters at every school. The shel­ters will dou­ble as gyms, class­rooms or kitchens.

After more than five dozen tor­na­does struck Alabama on April 27, 2011, FEMA gave the state $17 mil­lion for safe rooms. More than 4,300 peo­ple filed appli­ca­tions for grants. Of those, nearly half have been approved. The oth­ers are still being reviewed.

“They absolutely save lives,” said Art Faulkner, direc­tor of the Alabama Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency.

Alabama is also using $49 mil­lion in FEMA money for com­mu­nity shelters.

Fol­low­ing the 2011 tor­na­does, nearly 6,200 appli­ca­tions were sub­mit­ted to Mississippi’s “A Safe Place to Go” pro­gram, which also uses FEMA funds. That was more requests than the program’s $8 mil­lion could fund.

Among those who received money were Renee and Larry Seales of Smithville, Miss., where 16 peo­ple died in a 2011 twister, includ­ing both of Renee’s par­ents. They built a dome-shaped bunker buried in their yard.

“I don’t know how many have been put in Smithville, but it seems like every house has one,” Renee Seales said.

Since 2009, nearly 16,000 peo­ple in Arkansas have received rebates of up to $1,000 to add res­i­den­tial safe rooms.

In Joplin, the state’s pref­er­ence for com­mu­nity shel­ters leaves res­i­dents to pay for safe rooms out of pocket. But for many, the cost is well worth it.

Last May, Deb­bie and Dar­rell Nichols hunched inside their safe room in the garage as soon as the tor­nado sirens began blar­ing. The roof of their neighbor’s home came crash­ing through their kitchen, and it prob­a­bly would have killed them. Inside the rein­forced room, they were unhurt.

“We were hold­ing hands and hold­ing onto each other,” Deb­bie Nichols said. “Then you hear the glass break­ing and the roar, and your ears begin to pop. We walked out, and it was like a scene from ‘The Wiz­ard of Oz.’”

Betty Har­ry­man was in a Joplin hos­pi­tal about to have open-heart surgery when the twister hit. Her bad heart prob­a­bly saved her life: Her home was leveled.

So when Har­ry­man rebuilt, she added a small safe room where she keeps bot­tled water and a battery-operated light, fan and radio.

“After what hap­pened,” she said, “we thought it would be stu­pid not to have a safe room.”

Posted by AP News on Apr 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.