Hurricanes Increase Interest In Safe Rooms

By Craig Day, News On 6

SAPULPA, OK -- The busy hurricane season is prompting more interest in a made in Oklahoma product. Safe rooms may be the next big Oklahoma export. That could mean big things for a Green Country company.

At Bennett Steel in Sapulpa, they're loading up a brand new Jim Giles safe room for delivery. And this will be quite a delivery, 750 miles to Florida.

James Grant, who lives in Oklahoma, is taking the safe room to his cousin in Village, Florida, about an hour from Orlando. She's worried about hurricanes, and the tornado's they often produce.

"A tornado went through about five blocks from where she lives," said Grant.

Most shelters in Florida are made of concrete, rather than steel, and cost thousands of dollars more than a safe room. So Grant is hauling one from Oklahoma and has hired someone there to install it.

The whole arrangement brought up a promising opportunity to test market the safe rooms in Florida.

"They are not waterproof, but they don't have to worry about the wind and all the damage it causes," said Production Manager Rick Bradshaw.

Codes generally don't allow safe rooms to be installed right on the coast, but they are allowed further inland where flooding from a hurricane is less of a danger.

The Sapulpa company hopes to work out a deal with a qualified installer in Florida accredited by the National Storm Shelter Association.

"These are rated for an EF-5 tornado here in Oklahoma and we think it will serve the market well," said Bradshaw.

Depending on how things turn out in Florida, the safe room manufacturer may be able to expand outside of sales in just tornado alley to more coastal states that are often threatened by hurricanes.  That would mean more work here and the possibility of more jobs on down the road.

For Grant's cousin, buying an Oklahoma made safe room saved her thousands of dollars, and could one day save her life.

"Safety.  Never having to worry about what if?  All she has to do is run out and get in," said Grant.

The safe room company also benefits because hurricane season revs up, when tornado season winds down. Depending on what happens in Florida that could mean more work when sales typically slow down in Tornado Alley.