Storms Create a Scramble to Install Shelters

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/us/26shelter.html

Storms Create a Scramble to Install Shelters
By KIM SEVERSON

ATLANTA — Gloria Jones climbed out of a relative’s storm shelter in an Oklahoma City suburb on Wednesday night and saw only rubble where the house used to be. Eight people and two dogs had packed into that shelter, dodging a tornado that killed at least 10 people. As soon as she gets over the shock of the disaster and helps her neighbors get back on their feet, she will order a shelter for her own house...

What is on track to be the deadliest tornado season in the nation’s history has prompted record-breaking sales for companies that sell safe rooms and shelters designed to withstand the powerful storms that have killed hundreds of people this spring. From Minnesota to Texas — and especially in the tornado-ravaged South and Midwest — people are begging installers to get to their houses as soon as possible. “We are having such a bad season that people say, ‘I thought about it for two years and put it off, but now I really need to get one,’ ” said Alisa Smith, director of sales for the Arkansas branch of Family Safe Shelter. Her company is scrambling to install more than 40 shelters a day around the country. “Everybody would like to have one, and they want them yesterday,” she said.

But only in select cases are people required to build them. Government regulations mandating storm shelters, either public or private, are inconsistent. There are some regulations for apartment buildings, and some states, like Minnesota and Kansas, require that shelters be built near mobile home parks. Many areas, like Williamson County in Illinois, commandeer churches or schools to serve as voluntary shelters. Alabama passed a law this year that requires shelters to be built into new schools. But cities do not require residents to build their own storm shelters...

Perhaps less than 3 percent of the homes in the United States have storm shelters. While some municipal building codes outline what constitutes a proper safe room or shelter, the field is largely unregulated. A shelter can cost from about $3,000 for a concrete bunker to tens of thousands of dollars for elaborate steel rooms. A good one should have at least three deadbolts on the doors and walls that can withstand a piece of debris slamming into it at 100 miles per hour. It needs to be anchored to concrete pads, or, if buried underground, designed not to collapse when air pressure changes...