Safety in garage floor / in ground vs above ground tornado shelters ?

[skycitadel]

News ok article about shelters ...above ground shelters and safe rooms survived.

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-tornadoes-aboveground-shelters-stood-up-in-face-of-ef5-moore-tornado/article/3840636

 

[farmerbyron]

IDK why these guys don't test the above ground shelters by driving a car going 60 directly into them. Seems like a good way to put the doubters at ease. I am primarily talking about the concrete shelters. The steel ones bolted down seem like a bad idea IMO.

 

[Skiluvr03]

In case you didn't know, if you get a In-Ground Shelter, you can register your Shelter with the Red Cross and they will come check on you after a tornado to make sure you are safe. I thought you registered it with the Police Department, but I was told the Red Cross. Anyway, I heard in Moore, the people who had theirs registered, were the first ones that they check-up on. This was comforting to me as I am about to buy one and I was worried about the house crashing down on my door as well. It's best to be alive and wait for help then dead and not have to worry about it. Know me, I will find a way to get the F out, ROFL.

EDITED: Somehow I missed page 2 of this thread. I see where someone said register with the Fire Dept., so that may be who you need to register with. Maybe it depends on which city you live in? I will definitely find out and I will tell friends and family that live in other areas other than mine to be on the safe side.

 

[farmer17]

I build above ground concrete safe rooms and they cost a little more but there is no tornado that will take them out. I don't like being under ground but the garage floor safe rooms are not bad if that is all you can afford.

 

[tiasman]

In all of these threads one thing is common. No one has produced a single example of an above ground shelter failing, in any tornado anywhere.

For someone like me that is freaked out by crawling into a buried coffin, the above ground is the way to go. I do admit that if it did not freak me out, I would opt for below ground just because it makes more sense. I don't think a tornado can get worse than Joplin, and as the article above documented, the above ground safe rooms handled it just fine.

 

[Perplexed]

IDK why these guys don't test the above ground shelters by driving a car going 60 directly into them. Seems like a good way to put the doubters at ease. I am primarily talking about the concrete shelters. The steel ones bolted down seem like a bad idea IMO.

They did that with a Pontiac Grand Am going 40 mph into a concrete shelter - there's a YouTube video showing it. Didn't put a dent in the shelter.

 

[LightningCrash]

IDK why these guys don't test the above ground shelters by driving a car going 60 directly into them. Seems like a good way to put the doubters at ease. I am primarily talking about the concrete shelters. The steel ones bolted down seem like a bad idea IMO.

What about all the crap they do in the video here?
http://www.valleystormshelters.com/testing-videos/

 

[Skiluvr03]

I don't know, when I see whole communities completely flattened, like Moore, Joplin, and several others, there is absolutely nothing standing. Did none of these people have a safe room? Some of these were in affluent neighborhoods, so I would think somebody had one? The only example I know of personally, and it is a positive one, my neice and her in-laws were in a safe room when the outlets started getting sucked out of the room, when they came out, the two story house was gone, but the room they were in was the only thing standing. They didn't call it a Tornado because no warning was given so they called it straight-line winds, or a down-draft or something, but the grass on the acreage had swirles in it. Anyways, I would 90 percent safe in a safe room, and 99 percent safe in a underground, garage set-up. I have a friend that has a safe room, and is going to get a garage kind, but, that doesn't mean anything; he's not the type to do research or anything.

 

[SMS]

No one has produced a single example of an above ground shelter failing, in any tornado anywhere.

Good point, but just saying there haven't been failures only paints part of the picture. What I'd like to see is just how many above ground shelters have been subjected to EF-4 or 5 direct hits and what the result was.

In other words, all the anecdotal stuff is worthless. Where's the empirical data? Someone's got to have it collected, somewhere.

If I ever build new again, I'd like an above ground but right now the money doesn't even out in terms of what kind of protection $3K gets me for an underground shelter vs. $3K in an above ground.

 

[LightningCrash]

I don't know, when I see whole communities completely flattened, like Moore, Joplin, and several others, there is absolutely nothing standing. Did none of these people have a safe room? Some of these were in affluent neighborhoods, so I would think somebody had one? The only example I know of personally, and it is a positive one, my neice and her in-laws were in a safe room when the outlets started getting sucked out of the room, when they came out, the two story house was gone, but the room they were in was the only thing standing. They didn't call it a Tornado because no warning was given so they called it straight-line winds, or a down-draft or something, but the grass on the acreage had swirles in it. Anyways, I would 90 percent safe in a safe room, and 99 percent safe in a underground, garage set-up. I have a friend that has a safe room, and is going to get a garage kind, but, that doesn't mean anything; he's not the type to do research or anything.

If you read the earlier posted article with the engineer, they say how many shelters survived in Joplin (11) and May 20 Moore (16).

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-tornadoe...-in-face-of-ef5-moore-tornado/article/3840636