Tag Archives: Tornado shelter design

Tornado Shelters – Arkansas Tornado Shelter Door Failure

On April 27, 2014, in the state of Arkansas, an EF-4 tornado ravaged the communities of Vilonia and Mayflower killing a total of 12 individuals. One of those deaths, a woman, was killed and her husband seriously injured as they sought refuge in an above ground shelter that the husband had built for the couple’s home. It was a small masonry shelter with a hollow metal door and frame. Unfortunately, the door failed, the woman was killed and her husband seriously injured while the two of them were bracing the door all the while, the rest of the shelter performed the way it was intended. A true tragedy. My heart goes out to the woman and her family. This is not the outcome the couple had planned.

The door and frame were analyzed at Texas Tech University Wind Science Lab in Lubbock, Texas. The goal was to find out why the door failed and the study found just what the problems were with the door system. This is what the study found:

The door and frame were hollow metal with (3) residential grade dead bolts and (3) standard duty hinges.
The frame was not properly anchored to the masonry walls, as a matter of fact, there was no anchorage at all, the cavity of the frame was filled with mortar and the adhesion between the mortar and the masonry was the only thing holding the door in the opening. That is why the couple was attempting to brace the door because it was shaking in the opening.
The door, frame, and hardware were not designed or constructed to withstand tornadic wind forces. The door was apparently struck by a piece of OSB or plywood in the center of the door, bending it and destroying the center dead bolt and the lock set. Further, the top dead bolt failed and the door hinges and hinge screws were also damaged. This all happened almost simultaneously while the couple was pushing against the door.

These three issues lead to this tragedy. Unfortunately, from my understanding, the gentlemen THOUGHT he was being sold a tornado resistant door but in the end that was not the case. Along with the fact that the door was not anchored properly.

As I have said before, the regulations on tornado shelters to date has been minimal. It is like the Wild West out there and the buyer MUST BEWARE!!! Regardless if you’re buying a pre-manufactured shelter/safe room, doing a DIY shelter/safe room, or hiring a design team to design/engineer your shelter/safe room, DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Make sure the proper materials are being purchased/utilized and installed properly. Make sure your designer knows what they are doing. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY COMPLICATED DESIGN/CONSTRUCTION PROBLEM! Not everyone knows how to deal with them and what pitfalls to avoid.

I can tell you right now that one should expect to pay quite a bit more for a tornado resistant engineered/constructed door system than your run of the mill metal door. How much more? Maybe four to six times as much! Why are they so much? Because they are specially designed and constructed for two purposes, 1) to let you in and out of the shelter/safe room, and 2) keep you from perishing in a tornadic even! If you are paying $400 for the door, YOU’VE BOUGHT THE WRONG DOOR! These are not items that you typically find at your local lumber yard. These are special order items. You have to make sure that you are getting and paying for what you need to protect yourself, your family, and friends, whatever the case may be. Because if you stop at the door, you may have just wasted all the rest of the money you put into the shelter/safe room.

The shelter/safe room is only going to be as good as its weakest link. The problem is that weakest link is going to expose itself at the worst possible moment just as it did for the couple in Arkansas. Don’t let the same happen to you.

Be careful out there!

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

Tornado Shelters – “FEMA Approved”?..I think not!

I have been working with FEMA in some way, shape, or form since 1999 when I volunteered to design the first tornado shelter/safe room in the country to meet 250 mph wind criteria. This was pre-FEMA 361 era when we didn’t even have doors that had been tested for tornadic winds! It was quite a challenge but was well worth the time and effort. Luckily, FEMA made sure that I had support during this design; support from the likes of Texas Tech University, Clemson University, Greenhorne & O’mara engineers, and FEMA themselves. In the end, it was a successful project considering what we had to work with. Since then, I have worked closely with FEMA and their consultants trying to make things better with tornado shelter/safe room design and construction.

One thing that I have learned during the past 15 years is FEMA does NOT approve, certify, or even recommend designers or product manufacturers….PERIOD! It is against their policy to do such a thing. Don’t believe me? Go to FEMA.gov (http://www.fema.gov/safe-rooms/frequently-asked-questions-tornado/hurricane-safe-rooms#Q10) and look it up yourself! So, when you are looking for a tornado shelter/safe room designer, or a tornado resistant product and their literature states “FEMA Approved”, or “FEMA Certified”, or “FEMA Recommended”, this should throw up a red flag to you. They are not telling you the truth about FEMA and that should make you ask “What else are they not being truthful about?” The designers, designs, or products may be “FEMA COMPLIANT” meaning they meet FEMA guidelines and requirements but rest assured they are NOT “FEMA Approved/Certified/Recommended”.

FEMA has done a pretty good job at contacting manufacturers and product suppliers that make the false claims but they cannot catch them all! Purchasing anything relative to tornado shelter/safe rooms whether it be architectural services, engineering services, pre-manufactured shelter/safe rooms, or shelter/safe room components, it is a “buyer beware” market, almost to the level of the Wild West. There are so many people out there that claim to be “experts”, claim to be “approved”, you need to check there credentials, check their references! You can easily spend as much money on something that is wrong as you can on something that is right. And having something wrong in the middle of a tornado is not a good position to be in. Shelter/safe room problems will rear their ugly heads at the EXACT moment that you need your shelter/safe room the most.

IF FEMA ever changes their policy, I will be the first in line to get “Approved”!

Be careful out there!

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

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

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!