While there has been some disagreement among weather forecasters and engineers over how intense a tornado these shelters can withstand, evidence over the past month is suggesting that even above ground on the first floor, a properly designed and installed safe room can withstand winds of 250 miles an hour or more and the debris that such winds generate.Įven owners of mobile homes, the most vulnerable structures, can install prefabricated underground storm shelters just outside the homes at costs that can be as low as $5,000 if federal grant money is used to offset the cost, according to FEMA.Īnother approach that appears to be gathering interest involves building a concrete dome that is anchored to a concrete base. Refitting an existing house can boost that cost to between $8,000 and $10,000, the agency estimates. Hardened safe rooms of eight square feet – built as a pantry or small bathroom as part of a house under construction – can cost between $6,500 to $8,500, according to estimates by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In some cases, people who replaced their homes put a second or third bedroom with all the amenities in the basement – but hardened so that if severe weather threatened overnight, the owners could go to bed in the basement room and not have to worry about sleeping through a distant warning siren. Cassias says, designs for public buildings such as the local high school, as well as individual homes, included adequately hardened rooms to serve as storm shelters. As the community regrouped and began to map out its future, one thing that residents wanted was a town would meet the highest standards for energy use and efficiency set by the US Green Building Council in Washington. Greensburg, a small farming community in south-central Kansas, was essentially erased from the map by a tornado in May 2007. To be sure, Greensburg's experience is atypical in some significant ways, notes Casey Cassias, director of practice for BNIM, an architectural firm based in Kansas City, Mo., that worked with Greensburg to develop a master plan for its reconstruction. So far, no fatalities have been reported from Wednesday's activity.Īs recovering neighborhoods and communities consider their next steps, the experience of Greensburg, Kan., may hold some lessons, some specialists say. At least two tornadoes – and perhaps as many as four – reportedly touched down near Chico, along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains north of Sacramento. Meanwhile, cleanup began Thursday following another spate of tornadoes of varying intensities that touched down Wednesday in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio.Įven California failed to escape the day unscathed. Some 900 people have been injured, officials say, and 230 more have been reported as missing. It was the deadliest tornado since modern record keeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). where an EF-5 tornado – the most powerful category – swept through the city of 50,000 Sunday, at least 125 people were killed. "If there is a silver lining to this," it's the increased attention that people are paying to safe rooms and other forms of shelter that can help individuals survive even the strongest tornadoes, says Ernst Kiesling, an engineering professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock who also serves as executive director of the National Storm Shelter Association (NSSA), also based in Lubbock.įor now, however, most of the focus is on surveying the extent of the damage and consoling survivors. The opportunities range from installing safe rooms in new and even existing homes to literally thinking outside the box – trading a traditional home design for the graceful curves of a dome. They have an opportunity to do so, engineers and emergency managers say, in ways that can dramatically reduce deaths and injuries in the future. Following the tornado-driven tragedies that have struck the United States in the past month or more, many survivors are opting to remain and rebuild.
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