Tornado season is nearly upon us. And that means one thing to us Midwesterners – shelter.
GD and I were at the mall yesterday (MK was playing in pep band at a volleyball game) buying the cool hat I had promised him if he made a B on his Geometry test (I’m so proud!) when we stumbled (literally, it was set up in the middle of the of the walkway) across a huge steel box.
We walked in, turned around and walked back out. The box was about six feet high, and about five feet by eight feet wide, just enough room for six average-sized adults.
I grabbed a brochure. Why? Because this is something we’ve been seriously considering for our family.
Hey, don’t laugh. When you live in tornado country, and you live in a house with no basement, you think about these types of things. And you sweat about these types of things when those ear-piercing sirens start going off.
Do you KNOW how scary it is to be in the path of a tornado and NOT have any safe place to take shelter? It’s terrifying. Tornadoes are wild, unpredictable and very powerful – if you’re unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of one, all you can do is grab on to something and pray.
Kevin did cut a hole out of our pantry floor so that we could access the crawl space without having to go outside but let’s be real here – a crawl space is really not the place to be if a tornado rips into your house – the whole structure could collapse on top of you. Well, technically, it could do the same thing with a basement, too.
Our current option? Either huddle in the pantry, which is barely big enough to hold all four of us (especially now since the boys are bigger), or grab a blanket and crouch in the hallway.
Yeah, not great options, right?
So, we’re thinking about a storm shelter. It would likely be a flat-top underground shelter because above-ground shelters don’t make any sense to me. Sure, they’re extremely durable and heavy, but I’m betting if a category F5 tornado were ever to hit your area, that steel box would be reduced to a child’s wooden block.
I’d rather have a flat-top underground shelter so it would be a little less noticeable, something we could sort of disguise and keep from being a neighborhood eyesore.
Do any of you have a storm shelter? What do you do when a tornado warning happens in your area? Where do you go? Do you have a plan?
Seriously, if you haven’t thought about it, think about it. It’s always better to be prepared than not.
Write From Karen 
I’ve wondered about those shelter boxes if they really do protect you from tornadoes.
In Texas, all we had were prayers. We lived in a trailer house which is the worst place to live in when it comes to tornadoes. But here in Oklahoma, we have an underground storm shelter. We haven’t had a reason to use it yet. Thank god.
Usually during a tornado warning, we watch the weather on the news. Keep an eye on it. We also have a little black and white tv and a weather radio that runs on batteries if we need it.
I’ve always been fascinated and terrified by tornadoes. I suppose the weather nerd in me is in awe to watch videos of them, but when I was a kid, I would FREAK OUT at the mention of a tornado warning for our county.
Fortunately, (knock on wood!) the majority tornadoes we have in our area are not as strong as the ones you guys get in the midwest. Being in the upstate of SC, a lot of thunderstorms lose their punch when they come over the mountains, and then develop more steam as they pass over us.
Of course, that’s not to say that we’ve never had tornadoes. A couple of years ago, did a hop-skip-and-jump in the subdivision next to ours. During that thunderstorm, our gas grill slid across the deck! 😯
We have a crawl space, but in the event of a tornado, we can choose from our master bedroom closet, the hall bathroom or the laundry room — all small and centrally located.
It’s always on our mind here in Texas and when we lived in Ok. My aunt lost her house completely in the ’99 tornadoes in OK.
Since the hubs was a former storm chaser (crazy guy) he’s always still tracking and stated that we would most likely head for his office.
I will make one suggestion about the storm shelter and this is coming from hubs as I don’t feel qualified to be an “expert” on these things, he says if you get a underground shelter don’t have them place it so near the house, that if something were to happen to your house and it was destroyed, all of the debris and whatnot would be completely on top of you/the storm shelter. It’s best to place it just a little ways from the house. There were times in the OK tornadoes that people had the shelter dug in their garage and their house was destroyed, yet they couldn’t get out and it took several hours if not days for rescuers to find them as they didn’t know they had a shelter.
Just a suggestion. I didn’t meant to make this a monologue on my first comment. 🙂
That’s so scary but it’s good that you are trying to be prepared in any way you can.