Tag Archives: tornado shelter architect

Tornado Shelters – Retrofitting Existing Buildings into Shelters

When I first started working with FEMA after the 1999 tornado outbreak that hit Oklahoma and Kansas, it was amazing the things that people were calling “tornado shelters”. My eyes were opened when a FEMA representative showed me a picture of a “shelter” that consisted of this huge, salvaged steam boiler that some genius gutted, cut a hole in the side, welded on a couple of hinges to create an access door and called it a shelter. Now mind you, the boiler was cylinder shaped as you would imagine. This “genius” did NOT anchor this shelter to the ground! In an event, this would not be a shelter, at that point, it is a BAD, BAD carnival ride! Therein lies the basis for the FEMA P-361, ICC-500, and the National Storm Shelter Association (NSSA). It was to give guidance to people to create actual tornado safe rooms/shelters, one’s that could withstand the brunt of an extreme tornadic event and provide what FEMA has quoined “near-absolute” protection.

Well, unfortunately, there continues to be those “geniuses” out there that want to pick and choose what elements they follow from the guide documents/standards and are producing nothing but bad carnival rides. So what the heck does this have to do with retrofitting a building to create a tornado shelter? Well it is about a false sense of security, it is about telling someone they have a safe room/shelter when they really don’t!

I’ve heard a lot of talk out there about retrofitting existing buildings to serve as a shelter/safe room to a level that may resist EF1-3 which may cover in the neighborhood of 98% of the tornadoes. But what about the other roughly 2% that may strike a school when it is in session? Is this going to be OK if those children parish because someone decided to roll the dice with their lives and retrofit a building to the EF1-3 events when in fact the school maybe located in a 250 mph wind zone? What about the shelter/safe room that is designed and retrofitted to withstand the EF1-3 only to find out that some of the assumptions that the designer made about the construction of the existing building was in fact wrong due to field changes or poor workmanship? Isn’t this giving people a false sense of security by telling them that it is a “shelter” when it really may not be one, again the basis for guidelines and standards?

Retrofitting and/or down grading tornado shelters/safe rooms is an EXTREMELY “slippery slope” for EVERYONE involved including but not limited to building owners, designers, contractors, and especially end users. It is a situation that I personally, as a designer, have stayed away from because the outcome is potentially a lose/lose. In my humble opinion, the words “lose” and “tornado safe room/shelter” should not be used in the same sentence. Losing a child in a retrofitted school tornado shelter/safe room that has been designed only for an EF1-3 tornado is NOT an option in my book! Is something better than nothing? Is a bicycle with only one wheel better than no bicycle at all? I will let you answer those questions for yourself.

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelters relative to Sky Diving. (What the….?)

For those of us who love to fly in aircraft of all types and sizes, sky divers are a weird breed. For us, the old adage “why would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?” applies to all sky divers. So what do perfectly good airplanes and jumping out of them have to do with tornado shelter/safe rooms? Well…plenty! You would be amazed how many shelter/safe rooms have been constructed in schools only to have the Board of Education have a policy when the National Weather Service has forecasted potential tornadic activity, the school district is either not going to have school that day or if kids are in class, they will be sent home. Are you kidding me? They have a perfectly designed, engineered, and constructed shelter/safe room (airplane) and the kids will be sent home (pushed out of the perfectly good airplane). The difference in the analogy is the kids may not have a parachute (shelter option) to keep them from hitting the ground!

Why these policies? Because schools boards do not want to be R E S P O S I B L E for the kids should a tornado hit the school. WOW! WOW! WOW! I am astonished for this reason; School Boards do not want to be responsible for the kids in a shelter/safe room when a tornado strikes, even though the students can have near absolute protection but the BOE has a clear conscience sending kids home, some to poorly constructed homes, some to pre-manufactured homes, without basements or shelter of any type, possibly to their deaths. And they have NO responsibility for this? I am no lawyer, and maybe not the sharpest tack in the box, but I am a parent and believe you me, if my child would parish in a storm due to this policy, I am holding someone accountable! Quite frankly, these types of policies should be illegal! Did I say “WOW”?

Another issue that I continue to hear from schools that thankfully don’t have the “Send ‘em home” policy, however, still relative to sky diving, is parents that feel the need during a tornado warning to go to their child’s school, pick up their child, and take them home when the school has a perfectly good “airplane”. Wait….Wait for it….“WOW”! In my humble opinion, there are five things wrong with this scenario; 1) The parent needlessly exposed themselves to the tornadic event, 2) if the shelter is locked down, now the shelter has to be opened potentially exposing all occupants to the event, 3) The parent needlessly pushes their child out of the “perfectly good airplane”, 4) The parent is not only exposing themselves for the second time but is also exposing their child, 5) unless they have an equal shelter at the location where they are taking the child, this decision may cost the child’s life. How tragic that would be?

In these type of cases, I advise my clients to tell ALL parents that during a tornadic event, for the safety of their child(ren) and their safety, DO NOT come to school to take their kids. For those that are not very good listeners, when the parent gets to the shelter, they are directed to come into the shelter/safe room and STAY with their child but under no circumstance should they let the child or the parent leave. Sound harsh?….Maybe….but it truly is for their own good!

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Public Tornado Shelter/Safe Room Management-Part 3

So in Part One of this discussion, we’ve decided to open the shelter/safe room to the public, in Part 2, we have thought about WHEN the shelter/safe room should be open. In this Part, we are going to discuss WHO may show up at your public shelter/safe room.

With a FEMA funded shelter/safe room open to the public, FEMA states that an occupant should be within a ½ mile radius of the shelter/safe room with the thought that one can make the ½ mile trek within a 5 minute period. 5 minutes being the time from when the tornado warning has been given to the time that the shelter/safe room doors should be locked down. All of this is good and well, however, how does the shelter/safe room owner control the number of occupants that actually show up seeking shelter? Obviously, the shelter/safe room has been sized for a finite number of occupants which to some degree is not flexible. So what happens when twice the number of people show up at your shelter/safe room than it was designed? In smaller communities where one or multiple shelter/safe rooms strategically placed could easily support the entire community this may not be an issue but what about larger metro areas where just a few shelter/safe rooms will NOT support the entire community. There could easily be many more occupants showing up than the shelter would support because there is not an easy way to control this. The “Kid with the Golden Ticket” rule does not apply here. This could be easily be disastrous!

Imagine for a moment a community having one public shelter/safe room that is only big enough to support ¼ of the population of that community. This community is directly in the path of a major EF-5 tornado that is 10 minutes away. The community has been notified that this is a “tornado emergency” (as the National Weather Service did in Greensburg, Kansas) and the entire community should seek shelter IMMEDIATELY! Everyone in the community considers their options and 1/2 of the population runs to the ONE public shelter/safe room because it is by far the best protection in town. The shelter fills to capacity within 3 minutes and the doors are closed. What happens to the other ¼ of the population? Those that are beating on the door and pleading to let them in. Some of which may be children. Some of which may have been within the ½ mile radius boundary while others in the shelter/safe room may be outside the boundary. Those people that have exposed themselves to the storm to get to the shelter only to find it full and closed to them. Now they have to expose themselves again, with even less time before the tornado hits to seek shelter elsewhere. Can you imagine how awful that could be?

In recent years, there has been more and more pressure from the public to open tax payer funded community shelters/safe rooms, like schools for example, to the public because “they helped pay for it” so they should be able to use it. But if the shelter/safe room was designed only for the school occupants, what happens when the public shows up seeking shelter when it is full of students and staff? A solution could be to only make the shelter public when school is not in session. So now one has to have TWO different shelter/safe room management plans in place for this to succeed? Where having one successful management plan is scarce to begin with! And you know that even with the school in session rule, there are those that are going to ignore the rule.

Now I’m not saying opening a tax payer funded shelter safe/room to the public can’t happen, it just has to be thought out, documented, communicated, practiced, and executed well!!! Because if it is not, even with the best intentions, it could cost someone their life.

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelters – Doing it Right!

I would like to give a shout out to a couple of gentlemen that started out as clients and have become good friends. This is pretty easy when both business parties have the same goals. The two gentlemen that I am referring to are Dave Harman and Paul Maulden, both of Harman-Maulden Designs, Inc. producers of Great Room Shelters.

I’ve been working with the two of them for a couple of years now. They sought me out as a tornado shelter designer because they had heard after talking with several people that “I was the one” they needed to discuss their, new at the time, venture into tornado shelters. I typically will not agree to design pre-fabricated shelters because typical pre-fab shelter producers want you to do one design so they can go out and produce 1,000 of these “widgets”. What typical producers don’t understand as a designer of the “widget” makes me responsible for all 1,000 of them, but I only have been paid for one. So I was a little skeptical when Dave and Paul wanted to visit.

I quickly realized that these two men were not out to “revolutionize the tornado shelter industry” as many have claimed all the while profiting on the designer’s liability. These guys are out to do it right from the get go! For them, it’s not about a race to the bottom. It is about most importantly doing it right and protecting their clients from severe wind events. Now, that sounds pretty simple but the fact is, they are competing in an unregulated industry, where the common attitude is “how can I make it cheaper than the next guy even if I have to sacrifice safety or shelter guidelines or code standards so I can sell more shelters!” Their somewhat unique attitude toward shelters is why I agreed to work with them.

Dave and Paul are about quality, not quantity and as a shelter designer, how refreshing that is! They have a unique product, a shelter that is made out of wood…yes…wood! Solid 2x members stacked and squeezed together with steel vertical rods. Their wall system has been tested for 250 mph wind criteria and passed with flying colors. They have a residential model and have been working on a community type shelter for up to 150 occupants.

So if you are in the market for a residential shelter or even a small community shelter, give Great Room shelters a look at www.greatroomshelters.com. If you talk with Dave or Paul, tell them “Corey sent you!” Rest assured, at the very least, you will have a wonderful conversation with them!

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelters in Corridors-not so good

Okay, I know what you are thinking … “When I was a kid we were told the corridor was the safest place to be in the event of a tornado”. I was told that very same thing when I was in school, all the kids were gathered up and sent into the corridors we lined up against the walls and sat cross-legged on the floor. Now that we know what we do today about shelter design is that a safe place to be? It certainly is not! Now it may be the least vulnerable place of refuge in a particular facility if no other interior window-less spaces are available, but still not a good place to find yourself in a tornadic event.

One of the toughest items of design in a shelter are the openings and what single space in a building has the most openings? Corridors! Every opening into the corridor from the spaces leading into it, are places for a potential breach in your “shelter”. The cost of a FEMA 361 or ICC-500 compliant door and hardware can run as much as 4 times the cost of a standard door and hardware adding substantial cost to the shelter as a whole. Corridors often have openings which go directly to the outside at either end, which brings us to another phenomenon that can happen in high wind events known as the “wind tunnel effect” which happens when there is a breach at the end of a corridor and wind is funneled thru a long small space. The speed of this air can actually increase and move faster that the air on the exterior of the building. Most tornados carry debris with the wind and that debris can find itself moving very swiftly through the corridor where the inhabitants are taking shelter.

Another problem with isolating a shelter to a corridor running thru the middle of a non-shelter building is the need to separate the structure in a way that the non-shelter can “blow away” without damaging the structural integrity of the shelter. Having a shelter within a non-shelter host building has many other challenges which is a completely different and hopefully future blog.

Designing a corridor as a tornado shelter can be done, but it may not be the most efficient use of shelter design and construction dollars. All tornado shelters and components of the shelter should be carefully designed and engineered to assure “near absolute” protection for the inhabitants of the shelter no matter where it’s located. Thanks for following, and remember. Ask questions, do your research, and make an informed decision. The lives of others may depend on it.

Post by Shauna Schultz, AIA

Tornado Shelters – Buyer Beware

I continue to be amazed at the ingenuity and creativity by people trying to create a better mouse trap especially when you have an industry that is not regulated. It brings out the “wanna-be-engineers” that sometimes quite frankly don’t have a clue!

In particular, there is a tornado shelter for residents and they are touting it for schools that is actually on wheels. Now I want you to stop and think about that for just a moment…tornado shelter on WHEELS!!! It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to say “Wait a second, is this a shelter or a bad carnival ride?”

Now in fairness, this particular shelter is anchored to a concrete floor on one edge. It is accordion like and can be moved with a simple pull of a lever. THEN you have to install these cross bars at the hinge points, then you have to install these big drop in bolts into the floor to hold down the moveable end of the shelter. Their claim to fame is you can install one of these in every classroom and they save space! They fold up against the wall to a depth of 17” and you can put a white board on the face of it so you don’t lose wall space.

In my professional opinion, here’s the problems that I see with this shelter concept:

Contrary to their OWN specifications directly off their own website, the shelters do not meet the FEMA P-361, or the ICC-500 and therefore will NOT meet the IBC 2015,
1. No toilets (must have one that is ADA accessible)
2. No hand washing facilities
3. Not enough space as prescribed (per their claim, largest shelter will hold 9 not including space for portable toilet or wheelchair.)
4. No fire extinguisher
5. No fire separation from the host building
6. Not ADA accessible
7. Open space under the moveable portions of the shelter which may exceed the requirements of the 2014 ICC-500 (not yet published)
8. No compliant ventilation system
9. One door with no emergency escape hatch (required in current ICC-500)
The door is out swinging therefore can be blocked by debris very easily.
You have to keep the floor space clear in front of the shelter in order to deploy it or have to plan on taking time to rearrange furniture.
They are directing you to bolt this down to a concrete slab that has not been engineered to resist the forces necessary, (BIG PROBLEM!)
Bolts that one has to put into the floor after the shelter is deployed will have some type of receiver in the floor (see item 3). What if these holes over time fill with dirt/debris and one cannot get the bolt in?
It takes up floor space (more than the 17” advertised) and is a single use shelter!

In a school situation, a classroom with 24 students and one teacher, so, conservatively, you would need a minimum of 3 of these large shelters per classroom at approximately $15,000 each or $45,000 per classroom. To protect 600 occupants would be the equivalent of 24 classrooms or a total cost of (24 x $45,000) $1,080,000, and still not meet FEMA guidelines OR code standards! In this part of the country, we can design and build a 4 classroom fully equipped shelter that does meet the requirements for that same cost!

In my opinion, these type shelters may work well in residential (single family) situations but fails once they stepped over the line into the community shelter realm. And they are not the only ones. Requirements for residential shelters are much less stringent than for community shelters. Many shelter producers just don’t understand this! So..BUYER BEWARE!!

Talk with someone that knows about shelters ESPECIALLY for a community shelter situation. It could save you in the long run!

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelter/Safe Room-Smoke and Mirrors

Isn’t it amazing when something that is very popular whether it be a type of sunglasses, boots, shoes, lawn chair, car or boat, there is always someone waiting in the wings to offer a cheap knock off or a “better mouse trap” that truly isn’t better albeit cheaper but definitely not equal or better quality. And guess what? It has hit the tornado shelter industry.

I’m always amazed at people’s creativity when it comes to designing tornado shelter/safe rooms. Sometimes they are really good ideas however, a lot of instances, the ideas are just ludicrous. There are a couple of instances where people that believe that designing and constructing a tornado shelter/safe room for our schools are saying that shelter just cost too much and there are some alternatives in the “mean time”. My experience in designing K-12 schools most of my career, is “mean time” or “temporary” actually means they are permanently temporary due to many factors beyond the scope of this blog.

Recently, I saw an internet news article where a school district was being provided with helmets for the students to help protect them in a tornadic event. These helmets were not what you would see an Indy or NASCAR driver wearing, more like what you would see during a visit to your local park.

Today, a friend and colleague of mine sent me an article about two individuals that have developed a blanket…yes…blanket to be utilized by school children to help protect them in a tornadic event at a cost of $1,000 each. They have been ballistic tested and passed those tests…

OK, hit “Pause” for a second..

There have been a lot of ballistic tested materials out there whether it be steel, glass, composite materials, meshes, etc. and have passed those tests. Bullets are a high velocity but low mass object so they dissipate energy very quick. That’s how bullet proof vests work and that’s great! However, put that same vest against a 15 pound 2×4 at 100 mph and the outcome will be different. The vest may keep the 2×4 from penetrating it but it doesn’t keep the force from being applied to it. That’s why you don’t see bullet proof vest advertised as a form of “personal tornado shelters”.

OK…hit “Play”

Someone missed that the kids that perished in Plaza Towers Elementary School, Moore, Oklahoma, per the medical examiner, were killed by “mechanical asphyxiation”…they were crushed by the building materials collapsing on them and could not breathe. No helmet, no blanket, no bullet proof vest would have stopped this from happening.

Cost savings? Let’s see, 600 occupants at $1,000 per blanket = $600,000 plus you need the space to store them! You’re ¾ the way to a full blown shelter that would give a school additional space!

The helmets and/or protective blanket concepts in schools, in my opinion do nothing but give parents a false sense of security however “temporary” they are. Whatever the motivation and intentions, these efforts are misdirected and in the end could easily cost someone their life.

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Public Tornado Shelter/Safe Room Management-Part 2

Let’s discuss a couple of the most important issues regarding opening a community shelter/safe room to the public and that is when and who opens the shelter/safe room?

First, let’s exam the difference between a tornado WATCH and a tornado WARNING. A tornado watch simply means that the National Weather Service (NWS) has analyzed the conditions in any given area and have determined that the conditions may be conducive for tornadic activity. The watches can cover a fairly broad area and time frame. A tornado warning means that either the NWS has determined by radar that a tornado may be forming, or a tornado or funnel cloud (tornado that has not reached to the ground) has been spotted by law enforcement, trained spotter, and/or the general public. Simply stated;

Tornado Watch – Be aware there COULD be a tornado
Tornado Warning – THERE’S A TORNADO!!!!

There are those in the general public that get really nervous when there is a tornado watch and more so when there is a thunder storm associated with that watch area. They want to be somewhere they know they are safe in case of a tornado. And on the contrary, there are some that when there is a tornado warning issued, they grab their camera and run outside! (Let’s leave that to the storm chasers and another blog!) Point being is everyone is different and if you are going to open a shelter/safe room to the public, then you need to consider when someone may show up to take advantage of the shelter/safe room. In the past, FEMA has suggested that shelter/safe rooms are opened at the time that a tornado watch is issued.

Who opens the shelter/safe room? It really doesn’t matter, what matters is the shelter/safe room is open when people show up! The owner of the shelter/safe room should establish who is going to open the shelter/safe room, and that should NOT be one person! I would suggest that there are at least 4-5 people designated to open a shelter/safe room at any given site so there is some redundancy. Those people need to communicate with one another on a regular basis. This was a problem in a recent event where one individual was slated to open a shelter/safe room and did not realize there was a tornado warning! That left 4 people standing outside one of the community shelter/safe room watching the tornado rip through their town. THEY WERE LUCKY!

When should it open? If you are committing to opening the shelter/safe room to the public then it is YOUR responsibility to have that shelter/safe room open and available to those that you have promised the use of the shelter/safe room. NOAA states currently that the average warning prior to the tornado showing up at your door step is 13 minutes. That is an AVERAGE! In my humble opinion, at the very LATEST, the doors to the shelter/safe room should be open at the exact moment a tornado warning is issued…no later! Earlier would be better!!! If the shelter/safe room is not open when people show up, do they know for a fact that the shelter/safe room IS going to be open? Do they wait until someone shows up or should they go ahead and seek shelter elsewhere thus exposing themselves even more to the event? These are all questions that could take time to answer in one’s mind and could cost them their life!

Finally, who and when the shelter/safe room is going to be opened needs to be communicated with the public on a regular basis. Not just once! New people move into communities all the time and they need to be informed! There should be a system in place for this.

If you cannot fulfill these shelter/safe room management requirements, then you need to think long and hard whether or not to open your shelter/safe room to the public. Your good intentions conducted poorly could actually cost someone their life. What a travesty that would be!

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Public Tornado Shelters/Safe Room Management-Part 3

Tornado Shelter Walls versus Kinetic Energy and Deformation

Growing up, my Dad had sitting on his office desk a little device called Newton’s Cradle. It had 5 suspended steel balls hung from a frame. You raised one of the end balls, let it go and when it hit the others, the one on the opposite end would fly up. This device represents Kinetic Energy. I didn’t understand it at the time but for a kid, it was fun to play with!

Now, using that same principal, think about one’s head leaning up against the exterior wall of a concrete or masonry tornado shelter. On the opposite side of the wall, a 15 pound 2×4 traveling at 100 mph strikes right where one’s head is against the wall. Get the picture?

Along those same lines, the ICC-500 states that a maximum of 3” of permanent deformation of an interior surface is allowed. 3”! So, you are sitting in one of these steel shelters where the only thing between you and the tornado debris is a sheet of steel that can deflect up to 3” and the shelter manufacturer has so conveniently put a built-in bench for you, on the exterior wall of the shelter with the interior surface of the shelter as you back rest. A backrest that can have a permanent deformation of 3”! How do you think one’s skull, spine, and/or shoulder blades are going to react to that potential 3” deformation?

The long and short of this is regardless of the shelter or the shelter material, during a tornadic event, shelter occupants should stay at least 3” away from the exterior walls of the shelter.

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelters – Are They Worth the Cost?

There is no doubt that a tornado shelter costs more than normal construction, both in design fees as well as the cost of the construction. Many say that tornadoes occur so infrequently they it is hard to justify the cost. Typically, those are people that have not been affected by one of the wind events, regardless of the intensity. There are eight sets of parents in Enterprise, Alabama, and seven sets in Moore, Oklahoma that lost children to one of the events while the kids were as school. Would they say that the cost of a tornado shelter would have been worth it? You bet they would and they have.

So let’s put the shelter cost into perspective. Currently, the FAA has established that when you step on an airplane, your life is worth $6.9 million. When we design a school shelter for 600 occupants, per the FAA, the total amount of lives would be worth $4.14 Billion (with a “B”). If this shelter has a premium cost of $500,000 – $1 million to protect $4.14 Billion, isn’t that a no brainer?

The need for tornado shelters is a proactive issue. If one waits to support the construction of a shelter until they are affected by an event,…..well, it’s too late just as it was too late for those 15 students in Enterprise and Moore. For some, the cost of a shelter is not worth it as long as it is affecting someone else. Forget what the FAA says, look at it this way; what is YOUR life worth? What is YOUR spouse’s or YOUR child’s life worth? Isn’t that a no brainer?