Safety in Your Home

1/27/2020 (Permalink)

Severe Weather Safety and Survival

Safety Where You Live

Jump to "What to Do Without a Basement or Safe Room"
Jump to Apartments and Mobile Homes

Again, the key to tornado survival is a safety plan. Your plan at home should be known by everyone in the home and practiced at least twice each year. Children who may be at home alone should know what to do and where to go even if no adults are there.

Your selection of a tornado shelter in your home will depend on many factors. Use the basic guidelines and the information below to find your tornado safety area. When selecting your shelter area, remember that your goals should be:

1. Get as low as possible - completely underground is best.

1. Put as many barriers between you and the outside as possible.

It is not the wind inside and around a tornado that kills and injures people - it's the flying debris that's in the wind. Items can fly through the air (broken glass, etc) or fall down (could range from small objects to objects the size and weight of cars)

Storm Cellars and Basements

Being completely underground is the best place to be in a tornado. If you have an underground storm cellar, use it. Make sure the door is securely fastened.

If the entrance to your storm cellar is outside, you should allow plenty of time to get to the shelter before the storm arrives. If you wait until the storm is upon you, you may be exposed to wind, hail, rain, lightning and maybe even flying debris as you go to the cellar.

A basement is also a good shelter in most cases. If your basement is not totally underground, or has outside doors or windows, stay as far away from them as possible. Items from above could fall into the basement, so it's a good idea to get under a stairwell or a piece of sturdy furniture. If possible, avoid seeking shelter underneath heavy objects on the floor above. Use coverings (pillows, blankets, sleeping bags, coats, etc) and helmets to shield your head and body and to protect yourself from flying debris. 

Safe Rooms

A reinforced safe room (or above-ground tornado shelter) is as good as an underground shelter in most situations. Safe rooms are specially-designed reinforced tornado shelters built into homes, schools and other buildings. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, in close cooperation with experts in wind engineering and tornado damage, has developed detailed guidelines for constructing a safe room. For more, go to the FEMA Saferoom webpage.

If No Underground or Reinforced Shelter is Available

If you're like most people, you don't have an underground shelter. In this case, you need to find a location that is...

• As close to the ground as possible

• As far inside the building as possible

• Away from doors, windows and outside walls

• In as small of a room as possible

If you don't have a safe room, basement or underground storm shelter, what should you do? Remembering the basics of tornado safety, you should look around your home to determine the best place.

Here are Some Ideas

• Bathrooms
  
  Bathrooms MAY be a good shelter, provided they are not along an outside wall and have no windows. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing magically safe about getting in a bathtub with a mattress. In some cases, this might be a great shelter. However, it depends on where your bathroom is. If your bathroom has windows and is along an outside wall, it's probably not the best shelter.
  
  Bathrooms have proven to be adequate tornado shelters in many cases for a couple of reasons. First, bathrooms are typically small rooms with no windows in the middle of a building. Secondly, it is thought that the plumbing within the walls of a bathroom helps to add some structural strength to the room.
  
  However, with tornadoes there are no absolutes, and you should look closely at your home when determining your shelter area.

• Closets
  
  A small interior closet might be a shelter. Again, the closet should be as deep inside the building as possible, with no outside walls, doors or windows. Be sure to close the door and cover up.

• Hallways
  
  If a hallway is your shelter area, be sure to shut all doors. Again, the goal is to create as many barriers as possible between you and the flying debris in and near a tornado. To be an effective shelter, a hallway should as be far inside the building as possible and should not have any openings to the outside (windows and doors).

• Under Stairs
  
  The space underneath a stairwell could be used as a shelter.

Generally speaking, you should not leave your home in your vehicle when a tornado threatens. In most cases, you will have a better chance of surviving by staying put in your home. Every home is different - there is no absolute safe place in every home. Use the guidelines. Unless you are deep underground, there is no such thing as a 100% tornado-proof shelter. Freak accidents can happen.

Apartments

The basic tornado safety guidelines apply if you live in an apartment. Get to the lowest floor, with as many walls between you and the outside as possible.

Apartment dwellers should have a plan, particularly if you live on the upper floors. If your complex does not have a reinforced shelter, you should make arrangements to get to an apartment on the lowest floor possible.

In some cases, the apartment clubhouse or laundry room may be used as a shelter, provided the basic safety guidelines are followed. You need to have a shelter area that's accessible at all times of the day or night.

Mobile Homes

Even an EF-1 tornado, typically considered a "weak tornado", will most likely severely damage a mobile home and/or roll it over. This is why tornado safety plans are so crucial for residents of mobile homes!

Pictured below is a destroyed mobile home southeast of Wewoka from a tornado in 1998. This is an example of what an EF-1 tornado can do to a mobile home.

* Courtesy of https://www.weather.gov/oun/safety-severe-homesafety