Are you well prepared for a tornado?

[JDgreen227]

Last night there were a few tornado warnings in mid-Michigan, but we only had watches posted for our area. I would say we are reasonably well prepared for shelter from a tornado should one ever hit this area. Back in late 1988, after I first moved here, there was a very strong windstorm (85 mph plus winds) here that partly demolished my big barn and destroyed a lot of trees, and I wasn't prepared at all when the power went out for several days. Also, the basement of the house here wasn't very strong (cheapo blocks and not reinforced).

When my wifes brother and I built onto the house back in 2002, we decided to integrate a shelter area into the construction. The main entry to the addition leads into a hallway that also goes straight down a 4 foot wide stairway. The sides of the stairway framing are 2X6's set on 12 inch centers, backed by 3/4 inch plywood sheathing covered with drywall. The foundation wall (blocks) three feet away from the understair shelter area is fully reinforced with steel reinforcing rod in every cavity and filled with concrete. We added additional truss joist bracing overhead. There are no windows nearby, and the electrical, water, and gas shutoffs are a few feet away from the understair area.

Now, underneath the stairs we have a near 4 foot wide, 9 foot deep area that is standing height for half the depth. Inside there I keep a good supply of flashlights and extra batteries, wool blankets, a pair of crowbars, 2 cases of drinking water, a carrier for every cat we have (4), a battery powered weather radio, and battery powered cell phone chargers. The interior is lit with both AC and battery powered lighting, and the 3 foot wide, solid core door opens inward. Almost forgot...I have a 2A-40BC extinguisher in there too.

Seemed like a lot of work to do all these preparations, but when that windstorm hit a long time ago, I was 500 feet away from the house, and the wind blew me down numerous times as I tried to get to shelter. Never going to forget that helpless feeling !!

So, are you and your family ready in case of a tornado? At the very least, I hope you have a plan in place.

 

[patrick_g]

Power outages for a variety of reasons or seemingly none at all are common in this area. We have an automatic standby generator fed by a 1000 gal propane tank. The unit fires up if commercial power is out of frequency and or voltage limits for more than 10 seconds.

Our master suite is ICF construction with over twice the rebar recommended by manufacturer. Walls are a full and continuous minimum thickness of 10 inches of concrete. The master bedroom has two doors, one to the great room and one to the sitting room (third is to walk-in closet but the closet is inside the concrete perimeter) and these two doors are HD steel FEMA approved doors with three deadbolts each.

The two windows in the bedroom have interior storm shutters of sheet steel (3/16) on piano hinges made of 5/8 steel rod in 2 inch sections of black iron pipe (all welded) arranged to overlap and be secured with a row of bolts welded to one shutter and dedicated wrench is kept handy although finger tight is good enough. The master bath has interior shutters for the window. These are bi-fold (conserves space) of similar construction to bedroom shutters.

The guest room in the walk-out basement has similar shutters. All the shutters are attached to the wall with bolts set into the concrete at construction time. The bolt heads have large washers which are behind rebar inside the wall so pulling a bolt would have to pull down a steel reinforced concrete wall 10 inches thick. the ceilings are steel reinforced concrete.

In case of dangerous weather we don't have to stay up late watching weather on TV or looking at clouds to decide if we need to go to shelter. Our entire master suite is a shelter. We go to bed and don't worry about it. If the house is slicked, we will be OK and any guests in the downstairs guest room will be OK too. We will then call the insurance company. We casn live in the basement or the master suite while awaiting repairs or replacement of house.

We have a weather alert radio that comes on automatically, triggered by an alert signal from NOAA station which we use during the day. We turn it off at bedtime as we don't want to be bothered hearing about things that do not concern us and over which we have no control.

I have a two way radio network with radios in my trucks, tractor, house, and hand helds for when just out and about. These radios can typically receive 2-4 different NOAA weather stations for forecasts and weather alerts. We have well water in addition to rural water (like city water) and the well can be powered by any of our generators.

Generators: Generac 17.5 KW automatic with 1000 gal propane tank (800 gal useable.) Generac 17.5 KW gasoline powered generator on a trailer (welding trailer... I chose to have a real generator not a welder/generator. I have stick, mig, O-A, and Plasma on the trailer plus grinder, cut-off saw, air compressor, etc. This generator can act as backup for automatic generator. Handy when shutting down stand by genset for oil check/top off/or change during power outage. I also have 2 small portable Honda generators but they bdon't get used much anymore. I have propane fired genset in my slide-in pickup camper which can power a few circuits in house in case of multiple failures in rest of generator ranks.

If well water AND rural water are for some reason out of service we have 12 ponds and carry a pump/filter in camper to make safe drinking water from lakes and streams.

According to the severe weather gurus in Norman, Oklahoma at NOAA severe weather office the odds of a residential structure here in tornado alley receiving significant tornadic damage is on the order of once in 4000 years. So why are we so prepared? Well, this could be our year!!! That and I promised my wife if she'd approve a move to Oklahoma after retirement that I'd build a house with the bedroom safe from tornadoes and she said yes and has no regrets or lost sleep worrying about when to take shelter.

There are few excuses for not having reasonable storm protection. Tornadoes have been recorded in every state including Hawaii. There was one came through the San Diego yacht club. Tornadoes are less likely in some months but have happened in EVERY month. There are kits to retrofit a steel lining inside a closet and replaces the door with a steel door. Not so costly and relatively easy to install. I built a concrete safe room for my mom as an addition to her garage. I favor above ground solutions as they don't fill with water and old folks can get in and out easier. Not old yet? Well, just wait. You will be old some time, if you are lucky.

Parting shot... The interior storm shutters are not ugly as they have decorative cloth covers that make them look like drapes.

Pat

 

[JDgreen227]

Patrick g: Impressive the amount of preparations you have made....probably better than 99% of the population. Most likely you consider what I have done here to be insignificant but I figured we would live here perhaps twenty years at most after the addition was built and tried to balance the possibility of a tornado strike vs. what I did to prepare. Thanks for sharing your information, it gave me a few ideas.

 

[TripleR]

I guess prepared, but maybe not "fully prepared". We have a solidly built basement with reinforced overhead and supports. On the way down we grab cell phones and Surefire flashlights to supplement the ones in the basement. We have access to water in the form of hot water heaters and that is about it.

 

[nue2farm]

We live in an earthberm home... think walk out basement with a roof. We keep some water and food stored in the garage area. If a tornado is coming at us we usually have a lot of warning from the weather radio. We have a plan if one gets close. After reading about some of the other shelters and plans, maybe I will improve mine.... Thanks

 

[Dishpointer]

Sine I live in Tornado alley, when I build our home, my plan is to turn the area under the attached garage into a vault/safe room. The area is formed and poured at the same time as the basement walls but without pouring the floor. Normally contractors just fill the space with back fill. For a little extra, you can have the ceiling reinforced for the concrete garage floor and have an opening to the rest of your basement. I will purchase a Browning vault door and this room will serve as my gun safe and tornado shelter. The vault door has a safety release handle on the inside so you can get out if locked in. I will store a few cots and some supplies inside or could even set up a bed since it will be as large as a 3 car garage. The only worry I have is getting cell phone reception through the concrete. Might have to run some conduit before they pour the concrete so I can run an antenna in the future.

 

[RoyJackson]

What ever you do to plan...I suggest one of your first steps should be to get a good quality dedicated weather radio with a loud warning alarm.

My choice was a Sangeon:
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Sangean-CL-100-Certified-S-A-M-E-Weather/dp/B003QHXZM4/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1331651422&sr=8-6]Amazon.com: Sangean CL-100 Table Top Public Alert Certified S.A.M.E. Weather Hazard Alert Radio: Electronics[/ame]

This one has a very loud alarm. We can hear it anywhere in the house. It also has a battery back up.

 

[dmccarty]

We can only depend on the strength of the house construction. I did specify hurricane clips to tie the walls and roof together. These were installed. We will have to use interior bathrooms for a storm room.

The odds of us getting hit are pretty low. You can check out the number of tornadoes that hit your county on this link: http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms.

The link will show each recorded storm back to 1950, how much the damage cost, size of the storm, fatalities and injuries.

Our county has had 10 tornadoes in 60+ years. With only two being F2 while the rest were F0 or F1 storms. The county has had no injuries or fatalities from tornadoes. The big storms always seem to be in other areas. Or maybe we just got lucky over the last 60 years and it is our turn next.

Later,
Dan
http://www4.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-win/wwcgi.dll?wwEvent~Storms

 

[MasseyWV]

Thankfully, tornados aren't common where I live, so my preparations are minimal. However, I can't help but wonder how those in tornado prone areas would prepare against the power of an F5 tornado, sometimes known as the "Finger of God". I'm no expert, but given the sheer power of a tornado of that magnitude, I would think that nothing short of going underground would be truly safe.

 

[Dishpointer]

What ever you do to plan...I suggest one of your first steps should be to get a good quality dedicated weather radio with a loud warning alarm.

My choice was a Sangeon:
Amazon.com: Sangean CL-100 Table Top Public Alert Certified S.A.M.E. Weather Hazard Alert Radio: Electronics

This one has a very loud alarm. We can hear it anywhere in the house. It also has a battery back up.

I just purchased this exact same radio today!