Safe Rooms Increase Survival Rates in Tornados

[stormchazer]

Safe Rooms Increase Survival Rates in Tornados

Friday, March 26, 2004



TULSA — Now that tornado season is here, thousands of families in the heart of Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley (search) have built storm-safe rooms onto their houses.

The “safe rooms,” or storm shelters, are aboveground concrete bunkers designed to withstand winds in excess of 250 miles per hour. A typical safe room has steel-plating and a 300-pound door.

The tornado shelters cost about $4,000 to install, but the result is priceless — since the safe rooms are still standing even when the rest of the house is leveled by a twister.

The National Weather Service (search) reports that 1,200 tornados touch down in the United States each year, killing an average of 70 people and injuring about 1,500.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (search) spent $50 million over the past few years to fund safe rooms in schools and homes, saying engineered and tested shelters will dramatically increase the rate of survival during tornados.

Now the twister bunkers have become the blueprint standard in places like Tornado Alley for severe weather home safety.

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[Josephine96]

A lot of the homes destroyed in Florida's 1998 tornado outbreak were rebuilt with safe rooms

[Corona]

Why does it take a high fatality rate from some storm to finally snap people to attention? Safe rooms and underground shelters have been discussed for years but the building code and recommendations never mentioned them. I guess people take notice when the body counts in some district goes up beyond an acceptable level. Politicians start to look bad because they didn't do anything to mitigate the problem. Gee, where have we heard this lately?