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 The following article, written by James V. Walker was published in the November 23, 2002 issue of The Clarion-Ledger Mississipii News. This issue is available on the Clarion-Ledger web site www.clarionledger.org and is reprinted here by permission of Clarion-Ledger.
IN-HOME SAFE ROOMS PROVIDE FAMILIES REFUGE FROM A STORMNovember 23, 2002 After last year's deadly Pontotoc tornado passed within a few football fields of her home, Beverly Wardlaw decided she needed more protection. Wardlaw and her husband, Mark, moved into a new home in March. But in this home, what looks like a standard walk-in closet is actually a steel reinforced safe room. "It's about peace of mind," Wardlaw said. "We know if there's bad weather, we've got a place to go." Experts say this type of in-home shelter is the safest place to wait out a tornado. Unlike outdoor shelters, there's no danger of getting hurt by flying debris while trying to reach safety. Most people remember from school drills that during a tornado, the safest place is an interior room with no windows. A safe room is just an interior room, like a laundry room, closet or bathroom, specially reinforced to make it even stronger. "It's just like putting on clothes for the winter time," said Ricky Jaggers, emergency management director for Pontotoc County. "The more layers you have between you and that storm, the better." The other advantage to an in-home shelter is that it takes less effort to get to, meaning families are more likely to use it, Jaggers said. "People get complacent with outdoor shelters," he said. "They think, 'Nothing happened the last 20 times we went out there.' " In the aftermath of serious storms, like the Madison and Pontotoc tornados last year, the government provides special funds to help people in federally declared disaster areas rebuild with storm shelters and safe rooms. Those funds have run out now, said Amy Carruth, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. But they led to a flurry of such structures as people rebuilt their damaged homes. As a result, Pontotoc County now has more storm shelters and safe rooms than any other area of the state, Carruth said. Officials recommend safe rooms be stocked with a flashlight, first-aid kit, batteries and NOAA weather radio, she said. Larry Tanner, director of the Wind Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University, said debris flying in tornado-force winds can demolish even the sturdiest homes. In Tanner's lab, he tests safe room designs by firing debris from an air cannon at different types of structures. "I've seen a two-by-four go straight through a brick veneer house," Tanner said. "I've seen them go through two or three rooms." Researchers first started designing safe rooms in 1974 after studying areas where tornados had struck, he said. They noticed that often an interior closet or bathroom was the only part of a house left standing. Safe rooms can be built to design by a contractor, or they can be bought premade and installed, Tanner said. Usually, the reinforced steel and concrete is covered by drywall, so the safe room looks just like a normal room. Safe rooms have to be anchored directly onto the building's concrete foundation, so they aren't an option for manufactured homes, he said. They are less expensive if included when a home is built, but they can be added into an existing room. The cost generally ranges from $3,000 to $5,000. The decision to add a safe room is a personal one, but should be based on an assessment of likely risk, Tanner said. "Of course, Mississippi is very tornado prone," he said. Brian Davidson, a Ridgeland mortgage officer, said the area where he's building his new home north of Brandon was "torn to pieces" by a tornado in the early 1990s. "I told myself when I built a new house, I was going to build a storm room," Davidson said. Davidson ordered a premade shelter from Remagen SafeRooms in Tennessee. It came with instructions, and he has been installing it himself while construction continues on his home. The room will go inside a home office, and will double as a safe, he said. The steel frame will be wrapped in fireproof sheet rock. There's no way to know if he will ever need to take shelter in the room, but Davidson said he will feel better knowing it is there. "I'm doing this for security and peace of mind," he said. |