Tornado/Storm Shelter - Underground

[MossRoad]

His wife was a bazillion years old when I met her at my last job. She kept "the book" that kept track of all ads going into and out of the ad services department, and organized the workflow most of the day. Sometimes you'd look over at her, and the pencil was in her hand, a word was half written, and her eyes were closed. We'd watch her and a few minutes later, her eyes would open and she'd pick up where she left off. Then she'd look around to see if anyone had seen her.

I was her supervisor. I didn't care. The work was always done, the book was meticulously kept, and I figured she was meeting all job requirements, so what the hey.

Anyhow, back to tornadoes.

 

[Blue Mule]

I have two clients with concrete shelters that are right outside their back doors. In the entire time that they have lived in their homes, they have never gone into those things when a storm is coming. Here, that usually happens at night, and sometimes after midnight. It's dark, windy, storming with heavy rain and even lightning. Nobody is leaving a dry house to go out there unless it's at the last minute.

This is an excellent point. It's really hard to convince people to get out of a warm bed in the middle of the night and go sit in a box. Especially if they have to go outside in the rain to do it. The more convenient you make the storm shelter, the more likely it is to get used.

The ones that are installed in the garage floor alleviate this concern, but introduce a new concern which is that in order to have it available for use you have to leave your vehicle outside in the wind and hail. A lot of folks don't want to go that route either.

In an ideal world an underground basement that's part of your living quarters would be nice. But when the wife and I built 8 years ago the cost was $30k to dig a basement.