Broken Arrow Company Hopes To Certify Do-It-Yourself Safe Room

Oklahoma's own are no strangers to storms. But would you trust your life to a do-it-yourself safe room?

Tuesday, April 3rd 2012, 11:12 pm

By: News On 6


Oklahoma's own are no strangers to storms. But would you trust your life to a do-it-yourself safe room?

Imagine having a safe room that you can build yourself, then when you get ready to move, you can take it apart and bring it with you.

That's what one Oklahoma family created after they saw the damage that the tornadoes caused in Joplin.

Monty and Leslie McGee are the founders of what they call the only lifetime tornado defense.

"Most shelters on the market today, you buy them, you install them and then when you leave, you leave your shelter behind with you, so your investment stays behind," Monty McGee said.

The shelters are made out of steel panels. You can either install them yourself or have someone from Tornado Alley Armor do it for you. All you need is at least a 3 and a half yard concrete slab to anchor the shelter.

"Twenty six of these hold this smallest safe room down and it gives you 50 tons of sheer force and 75 tons of hold down," McGee said.

McGee says his safe room can be installed in or outside your home and they can sustain F5 tornado winds. A 10 person dome was recently tested at Texas Tech University.

"They sat before the two by four cannon that you may have seen on some channels that shoots through brick walls," he said. "We had nine impacts on one shelter. Far and above what we were required to do and never came close to failure one time."

If you happen to get trapped inside of the safe house after a tornado blows through, McGee says they've designed ways to help you get out.

"We give you hand wrenches that you store inside and so if the door does get blocked, you can unbolt any panel, the top, the front, the sides, the back and push it right out or pull it in," he said.

Although the shelters are already on the market, there's still one more step they have to pass before they'll meet the National Storm Shelter Association's standards.

McGee says they have already started that last step and hope to be certified within the coming months. If you'd like to get one of these safe rooms, head to our website news on six dot com for all that information.

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