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OT- How many of you folks have a storm shelter?

6

641Dave

Member
Just wondering.

The new place I just bought has a mobile home on it, which we plan on living in until we can get a house built, but I'm sure considering pulling the trigger on building a storm shelter as soon as possible.

Obviously the weather and the news has got me considering this and it got me thinking it maybe time to start digging a hole.
 
After the first round of tornados in Alabama, an "authority" on the subject said so far as mobile homes in a tornado are concerned, you are better off to go outside and lay down in the county road ditch.
 
Yep, my great grandmother was killed in a tornado laying in a ditch when it drove 3 wheat straws through her skull. Best bet is to just have peace with the BIG GUY and then no matter what your ready. Come total devastation or just a bumb on the head.
 
I don't have a "storm shelter" as such, but I do have a full basement with 10' walls. 'Always felt I'd at least survive down there. 'Always wondered if I'd be able to dig out if the rest of the house caved in on me. Surely the subflooring would stay put. Maybe I should keep a chainsaw and crowbar down there just in case. They say we've got a good chance of getting blown away today. 'Probably a better chance of that than the world coming to an end last Saturday.
 
Where are you at ?any where near where the latest round went through and you should check with the installers in your area.Very likely that if fema declares a disaster,they will be offering money to install storm shelters.Here after our large one a few years ago,they gave out $2500 and that would install a good prefab single family shelter.Well worth looking into.even if you dont ever use it,and hopefully no one will,they are excellent root cellars for storing home canned foods.like I say worth looking into,especially if your in a mobile home.
 
(quoted from post at 18:05:40 05/24/11) I don't have a "storm shelter" as such, but I do have a full basement with 10' walls. 'Always felt I'd at least survive down there. 'Always wondered if I'd be able to dig out if the rest of the house caved in on me. Surely the subflooring would stay put. Maybe I should keep a chainsaw and crowbar down there just in case. They say we've got a good chance of getting blown away today. 'Probably a better chance of that than the world coming to an end last Saturday.
Click to expand...

A tractor jack is what I'm thinking. I've looked into some plans and that's one thing several plans incorporate is a tractor jack, or handy man jack to open the door in case there is fallen debris on the outside of the door.

Yeah, Tarrant county gets the "half the cost" thing going now which I believe you are spot on with the $2500 deal, but the new place is down in Navarro which doesn't have that program going.
 
I have a tall basement too, with an egress window and a steel door that goes to the garage. (two steps up) I have a 8x12" I-beam that supports the house and sits on a poured wall so I don't think that I'd survive anything that would move that much steel if it fell anyway.
 
Dave,

I don't have a shelter and I probably won't get one until it's too late, but I'd really like to have one of the fiberglass igloo like shelters that you bury into the ground. It has a few steps down into it from the door that is above ground. They sell for a couple of thousand dollars, but they seem to me that they would be very effective.

My wife is VERY claustrophobic and tells me that she just couldn't make herself go down into the unit, so I probably won't ever get one.

Good luck on your choice.

Tom in TN
 
You know that old joke about mobile homes being tornado magnets... One week recently, there were 15 tornadoes in Va. Should have gotten everybody's attention. Underground is good.

My house, other than the windows, is a shelter. Concrete and steel green roof that weighs 240 tons (300 psf), anchored into reinforced concrete walls. I built it because it was cheap, and the thermal advantages (the house never gets hot or cold). I have been thinking about steel shutters for the windows. They would also raise the temp inside 2-3º on really cold nights. Also a big benefit in a forest fire.

A large tree tested my roof several years ago. We were unaware until I found it the next morning. No damage. I'm sold.
Exterior Shutters.
 
I live in Nebraska and have seen a many tornado and the aftermath but knock on wood never been in one myself. That being said.. seems to me that the best shelter is in a metal shed under the tractor or piece of machinery. WHY??? Seems like the building is always gone or partially gone yet there sits the equipment inside where its suppose to be...ive seen this over and over again.. dont know why ... but seems like a great sheltor..ha
 
I have an infinished basement consisting of a single garage and a large storage area. There is a closet, about 4' x 10', that is situated under my front porch inside the basement area. It has a steel door that opens to the outside, inside the basement, and I am in the process of fabricating a solid open prevention.
I am modifying the door because of what happened with a lot of structures near me in NW Alabama a few weeks ago.
There were reports of doors being sucked out and the occupants going with them.
So, being in a basement is better then being upstairs but we have to realize the POWER of straight line winds or a tornado when those winds can be 200MPH :!: :!:
There were also reports of people being "sucked out" of storm shelters :( :(
 
got news for you, a strong f4 will pickup the largest tractor,A f5 will pick it up,tear it in washtub type pieces and make shrapnel out of it.those pictures you see of tractors and cars setting where a barn used to be are the ones taken 1/2 mile away from the path of a f5!anyone who heads for a metal sided building in a tornado is not thinking clearly,most folks dont stick their body in a meat grinder.if you have a choice between a metal barn and a ditch,take to the ditch every time,you'll have a better chance of at least your body being found.LOL
 
if your building just for this situation,try to build at least one reinforced concrete corner (two is better) between you and the door.last big storm we had here was a f5 that went exactly 1 mile from my house.I dont recall the reason but I was home alone (thank goodness).when I just happened to turn on tv,and saw storm was coming,it was about two miles away.my doors on house are steel doors that open inward,I put my foot on wall,pulled on door with both hands and couldnt open the door!I'm not really afraid of storms ,but I have a healthy respect for them.
 
Closet thing I have to one is a cave that is a good 100 yards from the house so not much help there. I live in an older mobile home but have it so there is a big hill to the south west of me and that is where most tornadoes come out of. In 2003 the tornado that went through this are missed my place but took the swing set out of the yard and then jumped the horse barn and flipped the hay barn on its roof. All that stuff is less then 500 yards from the house so guess I got lucky. Ya wish I had one at times. My dad built one when we where in Kansas that had solid cement walls a good 18 inch thick plus the roof was the same way but that was also in the 60s and the Cuban missile thing to
 
Seems like the thing to have is a small shipping container buried. Fix it up how you want but the biggest downfall to any of the shelters is staying in them long term. If you have a closet size one are you going to sit in there all night, hot/cold, w/ a flash light and no place to sit or lay?
 
one thing i have noticed,in all the storms ive been out on,and with my wife being emt driving a ambulance for so long.If you folks are thinking of a mobile home,or know someone who is,check your local area for the directions bad storms normally come from.If you have a acerage with a hill or dip in the terrain place your house to use that as a sheild.In other words place your trailer in the lee of a hill. Even in the f5 that came through here,hitting several mobile homes,those on the lee of a hill all survived because tail of storm skipped over the hill before touching down again.its odd but you could stand in front of a mobile home without a window broken ,turn around and see nothing but bare dirt for as far as you could see!.
 
I'm pretty sure I could make a storm shelter, I'm not sure just how I want to design it. The design between my ears right now has me pouring a slab in a 8x10 hole with hooks around the perimeter and then framing up a box to pour the walls. Then the roof with a vent, good strong thick plate steel door with a good set of steps and a tractor jack fashioned in case of a tree on the door. We're on high ground and have a good slope where I want to build it.

I've also considered a smaller cargo container like what you see coming off these ships that folks are selling these days. Maybe bury it and and pour a slab on top for added strength and possibly use the top slab for a storage building or something. I'm just not sure if it would just rust out before long.

I know I want to make it sealed up good. I've got snakes around the new place and I sure don't want to jump in a storm shelter full of snakes, scorpions and black widows. Armadillos are welcome though.

Talking about what a twister can do to you, those pics of what the flying debris did to some of the homes and cars in Joplin seem to be just as deadly as being crushed by a collapsed structure. Some of those cars look like they had a machine gun pointed at them.
 
We don't have tornados here, but we do get hurricanes, which
deliver piles of water and fill every hole with water. The winds don't
get over 90 mph so we don't get the same tossing of stuff, only a
few toppled trees.
 
tornados only tend to last around here for a few minutes,but theres always the chance of being trapped in a cellar,food and light are not a bad idea at all.back on the farm all our old furniture went in the cellar,(beds etc),and old stuff came out and was hauled away or burned.Home canned goods were kept there as well as lights and blankets.We had a fairly big cellar about 12 x16so we kept beds and things in there.It also stuck up about a foot above ground and had a small wire mesh glass window in it above ground for light. grandma was religous about airing the cellar out. if the wind wasnt blowing too hard and it was nice out the door stayed open. if it was raining it was closed,if it was storming she would yank you up by the ear and drag you to the cellar!LOL
 
i had a farm magazine a while back and they advertised emergency tornado shelters. they were a wedge shaped steel box with steel doors. you dug a hole in the ground and then set the box in. they used them along fencelines so if you were out in the field and a tornado was approaching, you could run to the shelter and get inside. looked like a pretty slick deal.
 
Most every frame built house in the upper midwest has a basement. If I didn't have I would get something. Several companies make prefab concrete shelters. anything to get you below ground level is better than nothing, even a steel tank cut in half ,anchored down and buried quonset style with the top 1/3 above ground.
 
I live in Virginia and don't tornados quite as severe as the mid-west but hurricanes can be just as devistating. When they poured the basement walls for our new house I noticed they were pouring the walls around the outside of the front stoop. Asked what they intended the response was fill it with dirt. Added $1500 to the bill ahd them add a door and ceiling and frame a door. 10" thick walls 4' X 8' make a dandy shelter. Might even double as a gun safe.
 
One of FIL's neighbors built a house 4-5 years ago and everyone told him to build it on a basement, but he didn't. Just last month he had a backhoe dig a big hole behind his house and he had a prefab 15000 lb concrete storm shelter installed. He would have been better off with a basement he could use all of the time.

I bought a house last month with a full basement, but I need to take one corner and add concrete walls and ceiling for a gun vault/storm shelter.
 
Down here in Texas, we're doing good to keep a concrete slab in one piece with this expanding and contracting clay. I don't know any folks right off hand with a basement around here.
 
We don't have that kind of storms around here, we just have volcanoes and earthquakes. If Mt Rainier erupts, I'm counting on having some notice, since we're only 25 miles from there. In an earthquake, we'll probably be fine up to about a magnitude 8 at home. We're high enough not to worry about tsunamis.
 
Another thought didn"t see posted here and may or may not make sense for what you want but thought I would throw it out... A direct or close direct hit by a powerful tornado or storm is tough to shelter against and depending on your locale, might not ever really happen. Lot of variables as previously discussed here.
Going back many many years in a disaster design course I took, most wind storm injuries are due to flying debris. Flying debris is much easier to build or design against than a direct hit and the odds are you"ll experience that vs a direct hit (odds that is, but I"m a terrible gambler). The other thing to keep in mind is access and getting to that shelter safe and sound and in a hurry - and with family, etc.
The general consensus then was to construct a room or designate a room (in your case maybe a slab type addition next to the trailer) and concrete block the walls or if frame construction, sheath with a dense heavy wire mesh and some cement board to protect against the flying debris.
This doesn"t get you to 100%-any-wind-possible protection but is sufficient for a majority of the issues.
The other item that was a recurring theme in the course was to have a good insurance agreement with the "big guy in the sky"

Good luck
 
We have a smokehouse with a cellar under it. The cellar has a concrete top, and should be safe. Also have a cellar under the house.

My son lives in a double wide, or modular home, what ever it's called. He has one of those fiberglass storm cellars buried in his back yard. It's as slick as a hound's tooth. Has steps built in, and is as pretty as the inside of a new bathtub. One bad thing about it - you can't drill holes in it to wire it for lights, but maybe that's good. A lightning strike could come in on the wiring and toast you.

Tornados are scary. If you've never been involved with one, you can't imagine. In 1925, the worst tornado in the nation crossed from Missouri, all the way through Illinois, and on over into Indiana. Killed hundreds of people. Here in Southern Illinois, you can still see the path of the 1925 tornado. The folks who lived through the destruction built little earth covered concrete shelters in their yards. Those shelters mark the path of that tornado.

Paul
 
The thing about the burried shelters is that you have to go out side to get in them. Here we have two weather guys on tv who have a p'n contest to see who can talk up a tornado first, every thunder storm that rolls up in the summer they find some rotation on radar and tell folks to put their helmet on. Unless you want to spend a good bit of time in one most folks don't run underground till stuff starts fly'n and if the shelter is in the back yard you could get hit by a grain bin before you get underground. My cousin had an EF2 go with in a quarter of a mile from his house on Good Friday. His wife didn't want a basement when they built the house but see'n a next door neigbor's house, 7 grain bins, 40X60 morton building, and three sided tool shed scatered over 2,000 across the road has her thing'n maybe they should have got one. They have been talking about building a garage on the side of the house for a while, he now has the ok from her as long as he puts an underground shelter inside the garage before the concrete is poured.

Dave
 
i am converting crawl space into full basement 9 ft walls . I got worried everytime the sirens went off ,needed shelter and the extra room . Big project but worth it . After seeing the aftermath from Parkersburg Ia tornado,I'm upgrading . Heard some were sucked out of basements there . I'm building a shelter under the garage slab . Enter through basement .
I was in a tornado years ago in Kelly Iowa . Graduation party . wind blew all day ,that night DJ was jamming , folks dancing etc. Heard noise ,buddy got sucked through glass door ,into the house . speaker flying . I grabbed tight to gal I was dancing with . off the ground ,and landed at end of driveway on top of the gal . neither of hurt . We were carried close to 60 yards. i looked up to see twister touch down in field across the road . Dad was sitting in car with window opne about 4 inches, his glasses weres sucked out the car . Twister went over house thank God , pulled all the insulation out through open garage door . My car had windows open and was nearly full of cornstalks . We followed the path the next morning . Where it hit the field all the dirt was sucked up and almost like pavement left .
 
You Oklahoma guys know how many storm cellars, or root cellars, there are in your state. When we were harvesting in Oklahoma one hot summer day one of the young guys on the crew asked why there were so many BOMB cellars in that area.Jim
 

April 16 Sanford,NC my bud survived this



davidwatsons011.jpg


because he had this,,, full basement

davidwatsons014.jpg


He said it still tried to pull him and his wife out,,, he had brick floors in the house,,, 2/3's of the house gone their was not a safe place...

davidwatsons017.jpg


Sometimes you are just lucky when a F4 hits...
Totaled every vehicle he owned..



davidwatsons015.jpg


Blew his hobby shop away,,, sometimes luck is the best draw...

[/img]
 
The E5 that hit Parkersburg, IA a couple of years back literall wiped out every thing including mature trees, but oddly, a two story A-frame home was left standing. Never heard why. Leo
 
We did that as kids at a baseball game in Southern Illinois. We all laid flat in the ditch near the road which was on the first base side. The 3rd base side bleachers (3 rows) disappeared with the tornado and the back stop was tweaked.
Nuclear attack and tornado's were my only worries back then. All those crouch in the hall way drills to survive a nuke blast. Who would nuke Illinois?
 
Here in Eastern Nebraska, back in the 70s. Firemen on the roof of the fire hall doing the storm watch thing. Saw it coming, ran the siren and ran downstairs. They crawled under a 1960s Dodge 5 ton truck, with a full thousand gallon water tank. When the roof of the fire hall went they were hanging onto the rear axle of that Dodge. Said the truck was bouncing so hard the rear wheels were leaving the pavement.
 
Not much need for a storm shelter here in caifornia, but a close friend has a bomb shelter from the 50's era, It has very thick walls, and a very thick top, which is the house floor. It has a big door as well. Stan
 
Thanks for the links folks.


I just talked to the fella that is located right outside of Corsicana, Tx that sells the septic tanks and storm shelters. (If anyone drives up I-45 and knows where the Casita travel trailer place is, this is right next door).

His price sounded pretty good. A 7 person shelter installed for $3,078.oo which includes tax. $500 less if I install it myself.

We're going to stop by there this weekend and take a look. He's not open on the weekends but he said he had a shelter sitting out that we can look at. I suppose if anything I can get better ideas if we don't by it.

I figured I'd pass this along incase anyone else is looking. Dang if we didn't dodge more storms again last night.
 
After last night,i'll be looking too.we didnt have much damage other than trees,on one barn it lifted the roof about 4 foot and then set it back down,bro lost some shingles.Tornado went right in front of the house about 200 yards right up middle of pasture.Took out several neighbors houses, just made a loop around ours but got both sides of us.Dangdest thing,seems the new houses suffered the most damage.Saw one thing I'd never seen before,fairly new looks like a ford,pickup that neighbor drove as a company truck.He had just drove in the driveway in his own truck,grabbed the kids and took off just before tornado hit.It picked that company truck up,ripped the frame right out from under it, remains of cab was sitting in one place,remains of bed in another,and frame sitting in still another.At last word he hadnt found the engine and transmission yet!.his wife drove a voyager van,that thing looks like you got hold of each end and twisted it up like a dishrag! another neighbor has a good size dairy,had a hay barn on one side of house probably 100 ft long,had another barn on other side of house for equipment about the same size.Blew those barns plumb away with everything in them and the house where they were huddled up had no damage whatsoever we could find last night .7 people killed at last count I heard.one 3 year old boy,blew away and i dont think they've found him yet as far as i know.several injured of course,including one with serious head injuries when cellar door hit him as it blew off.weve always gone to the kinsfolks shelter ,sort of a gathering place to make sure everyones accounted for,but i think i'll start looking for one closer to home!
 
Someone had a pic on here of a buried school bus for a shelter . Heard few guys burying container boxes . I'd worry about creepy crawlys getting in .
 
Dont get many twisters here in upstate NY(so.central)Maybey 1-2 small ones a year,if that.But if one did come through here we'd be scrooed.I got no basement.Theres a small cave bout 1/4 mile up the road,probably would'nt make it.Really feel bad about those folks in the twister belts.I'd sure be lookin into some kind of shelter if I lived in those areas.

Good Luck

Stan
 
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