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Do any of you have an in-ground tornado shelter (not a basement) either in your home or in the floor of your garage? I am just wondering because I'd like to have one installed in our home or garage. If yes, has it been a good investment & have you had any problems with them (foundation shifts)?
No storm shelter but then we get a tornado every 10 years or so for the entire state of New Hampshire. Not worth the cost. If I lived in the midwest I would have storm cellar like they did in the pioneer days.
We lived in KS and used our basement (one corner was underground) . . . but since moving back to NC, we have no really safe area to retreat to during a tornado warning. We have considered installing this type of structure, but there are so many other things we need to spend the money on . . . just haven't done it.
I would be interested in finding plans for a "safe room" that we could build ourselves.
I live just outside of Jarrell, Texas, and we had an F5 come through about 11 years ago. We now have an in-ground shelter that is not part of the house, but a short way away. Not interested in being in it and having the entire house collapsed on top of it so we can't get out.
Safe rooms are a possibility, but having seen what that F5 did to everything that was above ground (it even pulled the plumbing out of the slabs), and the debris that was left, I feel more comfortable having mine a little ways away.
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
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Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady
I live just outside of Jarrell, Texas, and we had an F5 come through about 11 years ago. We now have an in-ground shelter that is not part of the house, but a short way away. Not interested in being in it and having the entire house collapsed on top of it so we can't get out.
Safe rooms are a possibility, but having seen what that F5 did to everything that was above ground (it even pulled the plumbing out of the slabs), and the debris that was left, I feel more comfortable having mine a little ways away.
That sounds pretty reasonable to me. If there were a tornado safe in my garage I would need to have a lot of valium and probably a syringe of ketamine in the safe at all times in the event house debris resulted in an extended stay.
OMG looking at that things makes me FREAK OUT - hello clostophobia!! We have a basement should we need it, but we don't get many here where we live now - just a few here or there - growing up we had a fully underground basement.
I live just outside of Jarrell, Texas, and we had an F5 come through about 11 years ago. We now have an in-ground shelter that is not part of the house, but a short way away. Not interested in being in it and having the entire house collapsed on top of it so we can't get out.
Safe rooms are a possibility, but having seen what that F5 did to everything that was above ground (it even pulled the plumbing out of the slabs), and the debris that was left, I feel more comfortable having mine a little ways away.
Very true. After seeing what happened in Jarrell I am convinced the old fall-out shelter (concrete underground) I had in a house in Texas was the only really safe way to sit out a tornado.
That said I moved and lived many years in tornado ally without ever seeing one.
Here is a simple reason why "above ground safe room" is an oxymoron. Consider at the F3 level, your house could be hit by a heavy car, but your safe room might survive along with parts of your house. At an F4 or F5, that heavy car might be hitting your house (or what is left of it) at highway speeds, and branches and lighter debris at 100+ mph. Any above ground structure that isn't a true bunker can fail under such battering.
F3 158-206 Severe damage. Roofs and some walls torn off well-constructed houses; trains overturned; most trees in forest uprooted; heavy cars lifted off the ground and thrown.
F4 207-260 Devastating damage. Well-constructed houses leveled; structures with weak foundations blown away some distance; cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5 261-318 Incredible damage. Strong frame houses leveled off foundations and swept away; automobile-sized missiles fly through the air in excess of 100 meters (109 yds); trees debarked; incredible phenomena will occur.
There is some confusion about the safety of homes and mobile homes in a tornado outbreak. An unanchored older mobile home is not safe in as light a tornado as an F1. A properly secured newer mobile home is similar in strength to a lot of homes in developments, and both of these might weather an F2 with some margin of safety. At F3 and above, no home is completely safe. When weathercasters instruct people to go to an interior bathroom or closet during an outbreak of tornadoes, it isn't because that area is safe, it is only because it is safer than the alternatives for those people who don't have a storm cellar.
Only 1% of tornadoes are in the F4 - F5 range, and 67% of deaths come from those storms. Do you start to see the risk/reward ratio for the makers and sellers of above ground safe rooms? They know that your house has a 99% chance of being hit by a tornado where you would be safe in a bathroom, and you'll walk into the safe room feeling good, and walk out thinking that you were protected against what appears to be a strong tornado to your untrained eyes.
In the F4 and F5 range, the 1% of the time that you REALLY need protection, your above ground safe room is little more than a coffin.
Last edited by harry chickpea; 09-10-2008 at 12:44 PM..
I looked at those "in the floor of the garage" tornado shelters at the Home and Garden Show this past weekend. It appears that you would have to open your garage door and move your vehicle to gain access to the shelter. Before I could get inside the shelter, I would be on my way to the Land of Oz. On the other hand Harry is correct in that when the big one comes, the only safe place to be is below ground. Here in Texas we don't have crawl space or basement foundations and I'm not nutz about putting one in with my slab foundation. So, the old Kansas Farm Cyclon Shelter seems to be the best option.
Well, the one I was talking about, I had seen on the news. Here's the link web address: Storm Shelters and Tornado Shelters by FlatSafe, In-Home Storm and Tornado Shelter . Now after reading TexasHorseLady's post, I may reconsider to having one built in the back yard, I never really thought about all of the plumming being ripped out of the slab too! Wow, that is sooo scary!....... I'll have to do some more research & decide what to do. I just don't understand why all homes in tornado prone areas do not have basements in them or at least some kind of protection.
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