Residential Safe Rooms: Background and Research: Fid-Bau Portal

Residential Safe Rooms: Background and Research

A wind shelter is an interior room or other space within a building, or even an entire separate structure, that is designed and constructed to protect its occupants from high winds, usually those associated with tornadoes or hurricanes. Wind shelters are intended to provide protection against both wind forces and the impact of windborne debris. Wind shelters typically fall into two categories: (1) residential safe rooms or shelters and (2) community shelters. A residential safe room is a small, specially designed (hardened) room, such as a bathroom or closet, or other space within the house that is intended to provide a place of refuge only for the people who live in the house. A residential shelter is similar in that it is intended to for use only by the occupants of a house, but it is a separate structure, often installed outside the house either aboveground or belowground. In contrast, a community shelter is intended to provide protection for a large number of people, anywhere from 12 to as many as several hundred. Community shelters are usually built within or near large public, institutional, or commercial buildings such as schools, hospitals, and nursing homes. A community shelter can also be built in a neighborhood to provide protection for residents whose homes lack shelters. Although community shelters are designed to accommodate large numbers of people, they are not recovery shelters. In other words, they are not intended to provide housing for people whose homes have been damaged or destroyed during disasters. Community shelters and residential safe rooms and shelters are alike in that they are intended to provide protection only during a short-term, high-wind event (i.e., an event that lasts no more than 36 hours, such as a tornado or hurricane). In other ways, however, they are quite different.