As the spring weather rolls in to the area so does the possibility of severe weather.
Tornado season is officially here for Illinois and everyone needs to have a safety plan.
People need to seek shelter during dangerous weather and Safe Sheds in Salem has been helping with that situation since 2002.
Safe Sheds builds above ground concrete storm shelters that offer protection that exceed FEMA guidelines.
When severe storms hit, you need to find a safe place.
An interior room with no windows is your best bet, but as we’ve seen with tornados and hurricanes you can still be vulnerable.
One such tornado near Centralia wiped out an entire trailer park.
“I believe that trailer park they were supposed to go downtown to the post office or something like that for shelter.”
This event got Don Guymon and his wife Betty thinking.
“I was talking to her and asked her what she thought about a concrete building that people could get into and she said Oh you mean like a safe shed.
Knowing that a lot of trailers have a shed out back for storage gave Guymon idea that is now Safe Sheds, Inc.
He designed a dual purpose shed that could be used to store belongings and offers protection during storms.
So what makes these sheds safe during storms?
“We pour the base, its 6 inches thick and everything from the base up is one pour, monolithic so there’s no seems in it. There’s rebar in it every 12 inches minimum in both directions the walls and ceiling are 4 inches thick and there’s a support beam down through the center that gives it additional support in the event a tree or something falls on it.”
All that concrete offers protection from up to 250 mile an hour winds and weighs over 12 tons.
One family in Arkansas knows first hand how the safe shed holds up during an EF4 tornado.
Not only did their house get leveled but the tornado also picked up a full size truck slamming it against the shed.
“I think this is where the wheel hit and the truck folded over the top here and went off to the side.”
Seven people with two pets were inside at the time and completely unharmed.
“Surprisingly there are no cracks or anything in this shed after going through it, it was about a 200 mile an hour wind.”
Plant Manger Rex Barbee says the safe sheds have an advantage over the in ground shelters, there’s have a 6 inch step versus the stairway down in the ground.
“That means it takes very little time to get a family member who has mobility issues into the shelter and be able to get the door shut the safety bar in place and be able to ride the storm out.”
The safe sheds have also been purchased from commercial use for storing network servers and computer systems as well as military bases.
“We’ve got 700 and some down in Ft Leonard Wood and around 200 in Ft Sill in Oklahoma.”
Safe sheds can be installed in about two to three weeks from ordering.
The sheds come in 6 by 8 or 8 by 10 sizes.
They are also developing a model that can be installed in a garage so people can go straight from the house to the safe shed without going outside.
For a look at how they are made click here.
