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Non-native Oklahomans seek houses with tornado shelters
Non-native Oklahomans seek houses with tornado shelters

By Chris Brawley Morgan

Published: May 24, 2008

Amy Montgomery was ready to move to Oklahoma, if her young family's new home came with a particular feature — and it wasn't granite countertops.

What she wanted was a tornado shelter. As it happened, the Montgomery family did move last June to a home equipped with an in-ground shelter, one of the 268 homes so equipped in the Liberty Trails addition in southeast Oklahoma City.

The steel shelter below the garage floor, which can hold at least four people, was a "major selling point,” Montgomery said.

Others buy a tornado shelter after they buy a house.

This is "the season,” the time of year when homeowners are reminded with shrieking sirens and pictures of homes reduced to splinters that perhaps they should look into buying a tornado shelter, according to those who build and sell them.

About a month ago, a tornado made a relatively benign appearance in northwest Oklahoma City. The next day, SmartSafe Tornado Shelters sold 27 in-ground shelters, each costing an average of $3,000.

SmartSafe is based in Oklahoma, with two showrooms in Oklahoma City — 8003 S Western Ave. and 13726 Lincoln Blvd. — and distributorships in six other states, owner Mike Shaw said.

"I'm working on some people in Virginia and Ohio. They called me, so we'll see how it goes,” he said. "It's really been a booming year for us.”

About a week ago, Richard Crow moved a 1,100-pound, steel-encased-in-concrete tornado shelter into an open storefront in a strip shopping center in south Oklahoma City and the next day opened his first showroom for Ground Zero Storm Shelters, 7848 S Western.

It's nearly across the street from SmartSafe, making comparison shopping convenient.

Ground Zero dealers operate in five states, including Oklahoma. The company installs in two other states.

At this point in "the season,” customers buying either a Ground Zero or SmartSafe shelter will have to wait about three weeks for installation.

At the same time, several local housing projects are using tornado shelters, partly to attract buyers, particularly those who aren't from Oklahoma.

The Hill, a high-end, under-construction townhome project near Bricktown, is including storm shelters in all 157 units. Some are below ground and some are Du-Pont StormRooms with bullet-stopping Kevlar.

"Some women won't even move to the state until he gets them one. Especially Californians, they've seen a lot of CNN footage,” Shaw said.

One home builder here, however, said he considered the tornado shelters little more than a "frill.”

Jim McWhirter, president of Gemini Builders, said he doesn't routinely include tornado shelters in his homes.

"People won't pay for them in the end. It ends up being negotiated out,” said McWhirter, who also is the president of the Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association.

Custom homes, however, are a different story. McWhirter said he is building two homes for two customers, both costing more than $300,000 and both with in-ground shelters.

In general, "a lot more people have granite countertops than tornado shelters. It's just a specialty item,” he said.

Shaw, however, remembered the first time he saw the shelters, thinking that they were "as handy as a pocket on a shirt.”

"It's a great fix for a serious problem,” he said.

Shaw, who lives in Ponca City, started his company about a month after the deadly tornado outbreak on May 3, 1999. Many of his first customers, including one woman who survived a 2-by-4 piece of lumber through her head, were survivors of that storm, Shaw said.

The first shelters were smaller than units today, measuring about 26 inches wide and less than 6 feet long.

"You would be hard pressed to get three people in there. A number of people, especially women, would be claustrophobic,” Shaw said.

He now sells more than 1,000 tornado shelters a year.

The most popular one is an eight-person model that is flush to the floor and costs $3,395. It is 3 feet wide, 7 feet long and 4 ½ feet deep.

Chris Shaw, SmartSafe sales manager and Mike Shaw's son, said some of their shelters are manufactured in Edmond. He is searching for a building large enough to manufacture all of them.

Mike Shaw said being from Oklahoma gives his company credibility.

"No doubt. People all over the nation know what we have been through,” he said.

Five years ago, Richard and Nancy Crow started Ground Zero Storm Shelters. They immediately installed one in their own home.

"We actually wanted it with the first child. But it took to the third child to get one,” Richard Crow said.

The shelters are manufactured in Perry, where the Crows live.

The most popular version costs $3,200 and seats eight people. It is 41 inches wide, 7 feet long and 54 inches tall.

Crow said they recently added safe rooms to their lineup after installing an in-ground shelter with stairs for an older woman. When the crew showed up, Crow said, the woman was using a walker. The safe room was to be installed only a few miles from their new showroom.

In general, the business is growing swiftly, Crow said.

Carol Williams, vice president of single-family homes for Gardner-Tanenbaum Group, developer of the Liberty Trails addition, remembers working in a trailer on the property back in 2003, when the neighborhood was still in the dirt-work stage. All of a sudden, a tornado roared through the area, rattling her trailer.

"That is literally when we decided to incorporate tornado shelters,” Williams said.

Liberty Trails is geared for military families, who like living close to Tinker Air Force Base. The intent is for spouses and children to be safe — and for the military spouse, who may be working elsewhere, to have peace-of-mind about this one issue, Williams said.

The tornado shelters have been a success on several levels, she said, and will be included in Gardner-Tanenbaum Group's next residential development, Pennington Place.

The shelters tend to be particularly comforting to people who have never lived in Oklahoma before, she said.

"We have a lot of people calling from all over the world. The only thing, unfortunately, that they have heard about Oklahoma is tornadoes,” Williams said.

Amy Montgomery and her family were living in Ohio when she first heard of the plan to move to Oklahoma. Montgomery said her first thought was of tornados.

Montgomery, now 30, survived an Arkansas tornado when she was 5 by crawling under a church pew. The tornado ripped the roof off the church. Despite a few cuts from broken glass, no one was injured. But Montgomery has never forgotten that day.

A move to Oklahoma hinged on either finding home with a tornado shelter or adding one later, said Amy Montgomery, who is mother to twins Emma and Madison, 3, and Kaylee, 5 months.

"Since we were going to a place where there are more tornadoes than Arkansas, we are going to have one,” Montgomery said.

Amy husband's, Rob Montgomery, who grew up in Indiana, also is glad to have the tornado shelter, particularly for his children He recalls a few twisters from his childhood.

"I remember being cuddled up in bathtubs and hallways. To me, a steel door does feel safer,” he said.

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