But what can you do to build a shelter in your home to protect yourself from the damaging winds of a tornado? You can build an interior room with additional strength to give it the ability to remain standing if your home is in the path of a tornado. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend to reinforce this room. My clients take this matter seriously and so do I. Although I realize that here in Texas we have more State Lottery winners than we have tornado victims. Meaning, you have a better chance of winning the Lottery than being a victim of a tornado. However, more and more of our clients are asking what can they do to protect themselves from a tornado.

Home Built Safe Rooms - In my opinion, the first step is to anchor the walls of your designated safe room securely to the foundation. Many builders like to use power driven anchors around the perimeter wall. That's where they have a device that has a 22 cal. cartridge in it and an anchor is shot into the concrete slab. This gives OK reinforcement to any horizontal movement but none to any vertical movement. This type of anchor is not acceptable for a storm safe room. Simpson Strong Tie have anchors designed to give the proper tie down for the wall where your safe room will be. The next step is to secure the walls and ceiling joist to the bottom plate. Simpson also has excellent devices to use to accomplish this. After that, two layers of 3/4" of plywood or OSB around the inside of the room. Some believe a 14 gauge continuous steel behind the two layers of 3/4" plywood is needed. Finish it off with a solid core door that has a 2" dead bolt to secure it shut. A room built such as this should very well with stand an EF3 to EF4 tornado. However, the winds of a EF4 or EF5 could lift a vehicle off the ground and fly it through the air. If this vehicle landed on your safe room the room might not be as safe as you would want it to be. The only SAFE place to be during a EF4 or EF5 tornado is in an underground shelter. An EF5 will leave an empty slab where your home once stood, including your safe room. It was an EF5 that hit Greensburg, Kansas in 2007. FEMA has a couple of detail sheets of their Safe Room design. You can download the PDF sheets here(1) and here(2).

Commercially Built Safe Rooms - This is an industry that has taken off in the past decade or so. The engineering schools have been shooting 2x4s into walls studying how to build a safe room that can with stand the forces of the BIG ONE, the EF5. I have seen commercial safe rooms made of steel and rooms made of concrete. The makers of these rooms claim they can with stand a 2x4 piece of lumber being shot at it at 200 miles per hour, about the minimum wind speed of an EF5 tornado. My question is, "If a Ford F-150 pickup truck is lifted off the ground and hurled at my safe room at a speed of 200 miles per hour, will my family survive?" Can you see the fallen concrete blocks under the pickup truck? That could have been somebody's Safe Room. Now for most tornados that occur, this will not happen. The BIG EF5 tornado is one out of a hundred and the odds of your home being struck by any tornado is, well, like I said, you have better odds at winning the State Lottery than being a tornado victim. But there's always that one time it happens to somebody. Ask anybody in Greensburg Kansas.

Develop a Plan for you and your Family - Although the odds of any of us being a tornado victim are small, ever family needs a plan and a designated place in the house to take shelter if you do find yourselves in the path of any tornado of any size. This needs to be an interior space of small size on the first floor of your home. If you live in a house with a crawl space or basement, then find a suitable space there. During the spring and summer, keep this place cleared from storage and be ready to take shelter in a moment's notice. Get your family a Weather Alert Radio that has the S.A.M.E. (Specific Area Message Encoding) feature in it. We're featuring one I bought for my Dad on the side bar of this page. Program it for the county or parish you live in. The NWS performs a weekly test on Wednesday and make sure yours is working. Tornados have been know to occur at 2 in the morning with no warning. This radio will should you that warning. In the spring and summer months, always keep one eye to the clouds and keep informed by the TV weather dude if there is the possibility of severe storms forming in your area.