Friday, April 24, 2009

Home Improvements - The Safe Room Part 1

So what's a safe room?? Sounds kinda weird. I know. When B first mentioned the idea, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I'd never heard of such a thing. He'd been thinking about our difficulty finding a safe place during inclement weather (read tornadoes!!) with our beloved dogs and cats. Although our neighborhood has been spared from tornadoes, communities further north have not.

The May 1999 were frighteningly scary and too close for comfort (about 8 miles north as the crow flies). I remember the exact moment we realized we needed to make a decision about what to do. Should we stay? Should we go, but where? Who would accept 2 dogs and 2 cats? I completely froze in my decision making. (I now know you should already have a plan in place so you don't have to make these decisions when you are so stressed.) How grateful we were for our wonderful neighbors' invitation, the same ones who shared coffee with us during the 2007 ice storm. They invited us over; both cats and both dogs. Their house has a below ground shelter in the center of their house that normally functions as their laundry room.

Since then there have been a few times when we’ve huddled in the only place in our house with no windows. The problem. It has a large attic fan directly above. Not a good thing to be sitting below this.

(to be continued...)

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