Storm Shelters We Designed and Should Have Built for Ourselves

It was just another typical spring evening in Texas this week-humid warm air moving into the upper atmosphere. The Civil Defense sirens near our Town Hall begin their ominous wail. I reluctantly take the mirror off the wall of the interior downstairs bathroom. My wife gathers blankets and pillows and any other softening-the blow items she can find. We take our places and huddle together in the bathtub listening to the beating of ping-pong size hail pounding windows, doors, roof, and sides of our home. Our clients, the ones for whom we designed in-home safe rooms, rest comfortably with the knowledge that, although there might be property damage, they are personally quite safe. I feel like the attorney who urges clients to get a will and doesn't ever get around to doing his own.

The sights and sounds of weather events surrounding tornados are often as disturbing as the actual physical aftermath. Survivor accounts of such incidents contain vivid details of the intense roar, sounds of breaking glass, the pressure changes, and powerful visual recounts of their homes' disintegration around them. Even though their families are safe, the post traumatic stress takes months, sometimes years, to ease. For those of us who don't have safe rooms, an unnecessary sense of urgency and vulnerability is created each and every time we see that storms are predicted.

The story of a client of ours in Oklahoma is a good example of the security these rooms often provide. He lives in an area where numerous tornados occur every spring. So, a major consideration in the design of his family's new home was a safe room. Last year, when his home was about 90% complete, a tornado threatened again. With the knowledge that he had a safe haven, he drove with family across town to be in the storm shelter of his not-quite completed home. In this case, just the knowledge that he had a choice for a secure location to shelter his family, gave him immense comfort.

Though you can retrofit your house with an in-home shelter, it's much simpler to add this to the design of a new home. Quite often, we use a walk-in closet surrounded by reinforced concrete block. When finished, it appears no different from any other closet in the home. These rooms are relatively soundproof with steel doors and can provide protection in an F-5 storm. They also double as 'panic rooms' in the case of other emergencies and can be fitted with a secure landline phone. A drawing* of how a master closet can be reinforced in new construction can be seen in the upper left of this article. A wealth of information about testing on these in-residence shelters can be found through this link to the Texas Tech website. The FEMA wesbite also discusses the recommended standards for residential shelter from threatening storms.

*This drawing is NOT for regulatory approval, permitting, or construction.