They’ll install it in mid-August, which is the earliest I could get it. The credit union at the hospital has a special loan at 2.99% for it. It’s on sale right now for $500 off and I get an extra $200 off for being a Veteran. So for $2900 I get a 8-10 seat shelter in my garage with a 12-ton 3-foot bottle jack and a ratcheting cable pull for the sliding top door.
Now I just have to make it to mid-August. But if it wasn’t for the fact that I was moving in to the house and my daughter was taking a day off with me, she would have been in her middle school and I would have been at work, and it wouldn’t have mattered in this particular case. Clean up continues. It’s going to take months to clean it all up, and years to recover the housing stock and businesses.
UPDATE–We were going to get it built in to the new house, but our builder doesn’t do that yet, and we would have had to bought it separate. If the financing didn’t work or for some reason the contract was messed up or something, we’d have given the builder a $3,000 upgrade to his product for free. There are builders in OKC who will build with shelters integrated, but ours isn’t one of them. He said yesterday when we saw him for the one-week check up (comes by and fixes things we found broken or improperly installed, etc) that he’s working with a shelter company now, fwiw.
MikeJ
$3000 added on to the price of a new house and it has a much better chance of saving your life than the stainless fridge.
Sounds like a bargain to me.
Seanly
I’m sure sales of shelters are spiking in the area.
Glad that you & yours are safe and sound.
PaulW
You should be okay. Tornado activity dies down after June. Hurricane season, on the other hand… (puts up an umbrella)
Jay C
Well, considering that it it has the capability of saving your (and 7-9 other folks’) life, it seems well worth the cost.
A question, though: is this shelter freestanding, or underground? And if the latter, does the installation include the costs of excavation?
eastriver
This is slightly vulture-capitalistic, but the hurricane will be a big boost for certain segments of your economy. Like construction. (Sandy was good for the NYC area economy. Billions of dollars injected into the economy into suddenly shovel-ready projects. Mother nature demanded some stimulus.)
JPL
Sooner, Once again, thank you for keeping us informed. Are your children doing okay?
Kay
Good for you.
I listened to the whole thing on the radio driving between Pittsburgh and Cleveland and I was doing fine with the ever-increasing urgency until they started to talk about the schools, then I was telling myself, “they’re home from school by now, surely, what is the time difference?” but of course they weren’t. So sad.
I know they can’t send them home early because parents are at work, and that would be worse, alone in that. We had a situation here where we had a serious snow storm and they bussed kids home to empty houses ahead of it and a tragedy resulted. Now they all stay put.
Lee
Is this above ground?
I’m sure there is a hint (sliding top door?) in the description that gives it away but I’m not that familiar with shelters to know.
thanks,
rikyrah
glad to hear this for you sooner. thanks for the update
quannlace
I still don’t understand why it isn’t mandatory for schools in so-called tornado alley to have safe rooms or at least a basement.
Corner Stone
@Lee: In his garage. No way an in-ground separate install for $3K.
You couldn’t rent the digging equip for that amount.
Lee
@quannlace:
The main reason is cost. A safe room for every class or a basement that would hold 200+ kids would cost quite a bit.
Lee
@Corner Stone:
That is what I thought, but I Googled the phrase ‘sliding top door’ and came up with this website.
Shakezula
‘Scuse the ignorance, but my plan in the event of a tornado is to fling the cats in the carrier and scurry to the basement. I’ve been hearing about shelters/safe rooms of late and wonder what’s wrong with the basement?
(Full disclosure, tornadoes in my are are neither common nor powerful, but we do have them.)
Corner Stone
@Lee: If he had a concrete coffin embedded into his existing garage structure for $3K then I would be afraid.
But, hey, you can’t have a basement at 30 ft above sea level where I am, so eh, mebbeso in OK.
Corner Stone
Looks like Uncle Sugar wants to make sure there’s no alternative out there it can’t track:
Liberty Reserve Indicted in Largest Money-Laundering Scheme
“Digital currency, also called Bitcoin, was developed as a way to make payments over the Internet without paying fees to a bank. The U.S. Justice Department warned as early as 2008 that criminals would increasingly rely on the digital currency industry to launder and move funds because it facilitates financial transactions outside the rules of the traditional banking system. “
Lee
@Shakezula:
Nothing wrong with that…if you have a basement.
Above ground shelters are for people who do not have a basement. Below ground shelters are just basic basements (typically no power or water).
Soonergrunt
This will be an in-ground unit, in the garage.
Pictures here
Installation video here
The kids are doing fine. The boy is working at his job and when he gets off work he goes to do relief work with some of his classmates. The girl is doing pretty well. She’s getting ready to go to Europe with her favorite aunt (they scheduled this months ago) and she’s all wrapped around the axle on that.
@quannlace: Schools built here since the mid-90s are built with reinforced shelter structures. Southmoore high school and Oak Ridge elementary schools, just down the road from us, and just missed by the tornado, are both designed and built to withstand a direct hit from an F4. They used the same technology to build as the Moore Warren Theater, which had the F5 pass right next to it. That theater is supposed to reopen tomorrow or later this week. The Moore Warren served as the medical triage/treatment facility because the Moore Medical Center, 200 yards to the north was more or less destroyed by a direct hit. The two schools that got hit were built in the 1960s and 70s, as was most of the housing that the tornado hit.
gelfling545
I read that as bottle of jack & thought hmmm…emergency supplies? 12 tons seemed like a lot so I went back & re-read.
Soonergrunt
@Shakezula: Due to the clay in the ground here, building a house with a full basement would approximately double the cost of the house. They stopped doing that around here in the 1930s. The only houses around here that I’ve seen that have basements are the 19202-1930s mansions near the state capitol (which is not far from the hospital I work at). Nothing I could afford would have a basement in these parts.
Lee
@Corner Stone:
Those at the website are really small being 3x6x4.5. They are also constructed offsite and then just dropped into the hole with some concrete between the structure and the dirt.
It ain’t fancy but it works. I’m considering one as well (I’ll wait for Sooner’s after action report for a final decision).
Soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: Nope. We’re underground for it. Remember that it was on sale ($500 off) and I got a discount for being a Vet. The bottle jack and ratcheting cable pull are extra.
Lee
@Soonergrunt:
I’ve got a question.The doors are obviously the weak point.
Have they rated how much they can take before failing? I’m guessing quite a bit.
Corner Stone
@Soonergrunt: They didn’t throw in the bottle of Jack for free?
I’d stick my boy in there but there’s not much chance I’m crawling into a coffin, willingly. I’d stick on my cowboy hat, buckle in for the ride and stand astride History’s Greatest Monster ™ and yell, “WooooooHooooo!!”.
? Martin
@Soonergrunt:
That looks cool. Sounds like the builders are starting to come around on what they need to be doing here. I’m a bit shocked that there are OK builders that are unqualified to do this. Honestly, before anyone gets to mandating these in the state, they should mandate that all builders offer the option to add a shelter and allow buyers to decide. It’s entirely possible that’s all that’s needed to solve this problem.
This is the side of the free market that is willfully ignored – consumers can’t choose something that isn’t made available. Before mandating on the consumption side, we need to mandate on the supply side and see the result.
Trollhattan
@gelfling545:
Folks with their own shelters would say, “Why the hell are we holing up here when there’s a three-foot bottle of Jack down the street?” Sooner’s gonna need a thirty-person shelter.
Roger Moore
@Shakezula:
Lack thereof. In many parts of the country, basements are not a customary part of the house.
Corner Stone
@Trollhattan: The pics didn’t make it look high enough for a disco ball, or any kind of mood lighting, actually.
Soonergrunt
@Lee: FEMA and the University of Texas have tested them. One thing the engineer from the company said was that it’s far better to put the shelter in a garage bay where a car will be.
Soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: Nope. The jack was an extra $150 and the cable pulley is $50. There’s no way I’m getting in a shelter without some way to self-extract. I’ve already bought the battery powered chainsaw that uses the same batteries as my hand tools.
Trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Good point. I think they’ll have to settle for some Costco LED ropes.
Looking at all the models from Sooner’s link, I’m disappointed they don’t have one called The Cheney.
Lee
@Soonergrunt:
That it what I was thinking. The doors look pretty substantial and then with a car over it there won’t be much chance for the wind to get under it unless you get a slow moving beast that hit Jarrell back in ’97.
Soonergrunt
The Business And Science Of Storm Shelters
Seanly
Umm, you might want to consider springing for the hydraulic jack on the door. It’d suck to live through the tornado & then be stuck in your shelterdue to debris piled on top.
Shakezula
@Soonergrunt: I see, thanks. I never thought of basements as unusual and what we mostly do with them out here is store utilities, house centipedes and adult children. That is to say, it strikes me as stupid that there are people who have much more urgent need for a basement who don’t have them. Glad you’re getting your shelter.
Lee
@Soonergrunt:
Make sure you reinforce whatever you are going to attach the jack to. You don’t want the hooks to pull out before the door opens else you’re completely screwed.
Trollhattan
@Shakezula:
“house centipedes” Like housecats, only way more paws to use on the scratching post.
That would suck, but then I know folks with “house scorpions” so I can place the centipedes below that on my list of “Things living in the house that are just wrong.”
pat
@Soonergrunt:
I’m assuming that the car will not be covering it completely, otherwise how would you get into it?
Soonergrunt
@Seanly: That’s what the 12-ton bottle jack I mentioned is. It will have a three-foot shaft, and be mounted to the wall of the shelter, directly under the end of the door. The door slides instead of opening like–well, a door.
@Lee: The ratcheting cable puller will be connected to the door, and the attachment point is 1/4in diameter steel bar bent into a handle shape and welded to the door.
Trollhattan
@pat:
It’s Oklahoma: monster truck.
Ash Can
@Kay: With the exception of very flimsy or unsecured structures, inside is better than outside in the event of a tornado, period. Since the primary danger of a tornado by far is the blowing debris, the best thing to do is to shelter in the sturdiest part of the sturdiest structure available, which in the case of most schools is the first floor interior hallway. It would have been terribly negligent of the school to send the children outside of the building with the storm imminent, whether or not the doors of their homes had been open to them. The outcome of sheltering them in what turned out to be an inadequate structure was bad, but putting them on buses and hoping they made it home in time would have been worse.
IMNSHO, on days when the NWS predicts violent weather outbreaks, schools in the areas affected should cancel classes for the entire school day — a tornado day, rather than a snow day. Kids should just stay home, as a precaution, and make the day up later in the school year, as is done with snow days. It seems reasonable given the scope of the potential destruction, even though the chances of any given school being leveled are still small even within the forecast area.
Corner Stone
@pat: It’s Ford Pinto. As long as he doesn’t try driving it anywhere he should be safe enough underneath it.
Soonergrunt
@pat: They install the shelter about a foot in from the garage door, and you pull the car far enough ahead that there’s 18 inches (or more) horizontal distance between the back bumper and the end of the shelter. Or you pay an extra $300 to have it placed against the back wall of the garage and park the car just inside the door.
We haven’t actually decided which one to do yet.
There are advantages to both, and we’re going to meet with an engineer from the company at the house first.
? Martin
@Ash Can:
That’s damn near the whole of April and May some years.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
FTFY.
Trollhattan
@Ash Can:
Anecdotally, the upper grade kids were herded over to the neighboring church, which had storm-shelter construction. I’ve not read an explanation why the younger kids didn’t also go. Perhaps there wasn’t capacity or perhaps it’s simply that younger kids are much tougher to gather and move, especially in unusual circumstances. Either way, the staff were heroic beyond reason that day.
Agree that given the severity of NOAA’s predictions–quite accurate as it turns out–they should consider whether to cancel school. What I don’t know is what a reasonable level of severity might be and how many false alarms it would trigger.
Seanly
My slow typing caused me to miss the update about getting the jack.
I studied wind & low rise buildings when I was at Clemson University – did some research at Wind Load Test Facility for the thesis I never finished. We can engineer low rise buildings (aka houses) to better withstand hurricanes & high straightline winds (and earthquakes though that wasn’t an area of focus for CU), but all bets are off for a direct strike from tornadoes.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
The problem is that they can only give really good predictions a very short time in advance. The tornado emergency was declared only about 15 minutes before the tornado actually struck. That’s basically enough time for people to get to shelter but not a lot more. Until they can get substantially better warnings than that, the best alternative is to provide good shelters and make sure people can get into them in the time available.
Soonergrunt
@Trollhattan: That’s the first I’ve heard that.
@Seanly: One of the things that we specc’ed on this home was NO gable roofs. There’s a semi-gable/semi-hip roof over the north facing garage. Since the predominant wind direction is from the south and the west, we have no gables at all on that side.
Gable roofs get damaged more often than hip roofs because the wall diverts the full force of the wind up and uses the eave as a lever to rip the roof off. With a gabled roof, the wind flows around the building more readily.
Poopyman
@Soonergrunt:
Hmmmm. So the shelter’s good for the zombie apocalypse too? Good to know.
Corner Stone
@Poopyman:
Man, ’cause I don’t wanna do that
I want to have a good time and enjoy my Jack
Sit back and watch the women get drunk as Hell
So I can wake up in the mornin’ wit a story to tell
I know it’s been a li’l while since I been out the house
But now I’m here you wanna stand around runnin’ your mouth
I can’t hear nothin’ you sayin’ or spittin’, so what’s up
Don’t you see we in the club, man shut the fuck up
agorabum
Any thoughts on the monolithic dome?
http://www.monolithic.com/
You could be the first kid in your neighborhood with a dome house! Although the neighbors wouldn’t like it, NIMBY, zoning, etc…
But it looks like more houses / structures in tornado alley ought to be building with these types of tornado protections…
They even have drop-in place shelters that you could stick in the backyard:
http://tornadodome.com/
Looks neat to me, anyone in the mid-west have any actual experience?
Ash Can
@? Martin: No, I’m talking about the day-to-day forecasts of severe weather outbreaks. For example, the Moore OK tornado occurred within an area of central OK that the NWS had identified as having a “moderate” chance of violent weather over that 24-hour period. I’m saying that in the areas labeled “moderate” or “high” for likelihood of violent weather over that 24-hour forecast period, school should be canceled for that day.
Shakezula
This would result in no school during tornado season (which isn’t an actual season, just a period where the weather conditions are more likely to generate a tornado and that varies across the country). It would be more reasonable to compress the entire school year into October – April.
Shakezula
@Poopyman: Do not just start decapitating zombies, do you understand?
Ash Can
@Trollhattan: I’m talking about sending the kids far outside the school building; a neighboring structure is a different story. If the kids are being taken out of the school and into a structure that’s only a matter of feet away, then unless the tornado is close enough to already be blowing debris at them, I see no problem with that. And I too have no idea why the younger kids weren’t also sent there. But I’m not about to second-guess the school staff, who obviously knew way more about the situation than any of us safe and sound and many miles away.
As for “false alarms,” there are many false alarms in weather warning situations. Even in the event of a tornado warning, your chances of actually being hit, at least while the thing is still miles away, are pretty small. Chances are, all the schools in a 24-hour moderate-to-high-risk area would end up unscathed. But the precaution, IMO, would be worth the inconvenience of having to make up a weather day.
Corner Stone
Why the fuck are we sponsoring Israel when we could be installing Iron Dome right here in the US against these fiendishly inspired AQ-nadoes?
Ash Can
(Something funny is up with FYWP, so I’m going to try this again.)
@Shakezula: See my #53. The NWS is actually pretty good at predicting violent weather outbreaks over a 24-hour period with considerable accuracy.
StringOnAStick
@Soonergrunt: Good explanation of the gable roof issue in tornado country; you obviously thought all this through when you had this house built. too bad your builder wasn’t up to the task of putting the safe room under the garage at the time – better late than never though.
The idea of putting a safe room under the garage slab seems like a really, really good one. Making sure you have a way to get out of it (and a redundant light source) looks like excellent planning as well!
Corner Stone
@StringOnAStick:
Well, he needs to be able to see when he is feasting on his fellow trapped inhabitants.
Lee
@Soonergrunt:
Did a bit of thinking on the location.
I would think next to the back wall for easy access from the house. Just in case the car is parked over the entrance you can easily pop it into neutral and push it back into the garage door. The other way you would be pushing it into the wall of the house.
Also, in non-emergency times you would be more walkway going into the house as opposed to more walkway by your garage door.
Of course you might have different/better reasons for the opposite.
Seanly
@Soonergrunt:
Eliminating gables is good. Sounds like you have someone offering you good advice.
Another important factor is the quality of construction. I was at Clemson just a year after Hurricane Andrew. One significant finding that was underreported was that the neighborhoods built by long time Florida contractors fared much better than those built by contractors coming in from other areas. Shoddy construction such as entire edges of plywood roof sheathing not being nailed down led to a lot of the damage.
From your discussion, it sounds like you’re been keeping an eye on the contractor & have a pretty good one.
Is your sillplate bolted to the slab? Are you using hurricane straps for the wall to roof truss connections? Those aren’t as critical in non-hurricane areas, but can help mitigate damage from high straightline winds (again, all bets are off if a tornado hits). Better to lose a couple of 4×8 sheets off the roof than have the entire thing rip off.
Soonergrunt
I saw the gables thing on a tv special about the city of Greenburg, KS–95% of the buildings in the town were destroyed by an F5 tornado, May 4th, 2007.
The design we chose and modified already had those roofs and most modern designs in this region eschew gables for hips.
@Seanly: Yeah, our sillplates are bolted to the foundation stem wall. They installed eyebolts upside-down in the concrete with rebar through the eye and the bolt sticking up. Then when they put the sill-plate down, they put the sealant/adhesive down, laid the sillplate over it (with holes for the bolts, obviously) and then added washers and nuts over the bolts. hurricane straps holding down the rafters (no roof trusses, as such) with extra bracing in the attic.
e.a.f.
it is hard to imagine tornado shelters are not a requirement in all buildings, like part of a building code. They save lives! They save injuries! Just the savings on death and injury should warrant the shelters in all homes and public buildings. To not have tornado shelters in schools, especially in an area nick named “tornado alley” is a form of child neglect and abuse.
It might help to strengthen building codes so public buildings, such as schools and hospitals did not sucumb to damage during tornados. In the long run it would be much less expensive to build a building which with stands these high winds than rebuilding each time.
It is time children were treated like fine works of art. You don’t leave expensive art out for a tornado. Lets not leave children out there either.
JR in WV
I once stopped at an interstate rest stop, pretty sure it was in OK, to “rest” in the public toilet. I was bemused at the heavy consgtruction of the building, until I saw the door into the shelter – like a bank vault or submarine, big wheel with bolts all around the door.
But how many drivers would be able to make it to that shelter? How would a guy from the mountains know that the rest stop had a shelter?
I’m thinking that FEMA needs a big budget line for storm shelters, like a billion dollars. Or so. Then people who need one and can’t afford it get assistance, and shelter builders get more business, STIMULUS everybody!
And kids get safety when the swirly storms come. No excuse for building codes not requiring shelters. If the water table is too shallow, use a different design. But house fires are rare now in new structures, because of the code requiring fire blocking in walls and smoke detedtors, which if there is a fire, at least give you a chance to get out.
I’ve heard a lot of evasion about why there aren’t shelter requrements in building codes, and that’s all they are, evasions. Lies. It’s cheaper to build non-code, yes, we all know that cheap and shoddy is less expensive. It’s also wrong. These dead school children are the fault of the building code folks of Oklahoma. Period.
“It’s too expensive for us to save your kids in school, where they are required to be during the time of day tornados are most common.” Right! That’s the truth, but no politician is going to admit it.
They could do without the football stadium, or ask the community to raise money for it AFTER the shelters were funded and built. But that would be so socialist, to require safety. Right?
JR in WV
@Corner Stone:
No, a small hoe would be way less than a grand for a week, if I recall correctly my neighbor spent about $750 a month for a monster how to build his house and road. You still need the actual structure, but the equipment is a minor part of the job.