 | Bob Crager of Lewis Street Glass is a 26 year veteran in the glass business. Lewis Street Glass is a leading Wichita Glass company, serving the entire Wichita/Sedgwick County area since 1919. They do anything and everything having to do with glass, both residential and commercial. They also do Auto glass. They are located at 743 South Market, facing Kellogg on the South, and you can reach them by phone at (316) 263-8259. You can email Bob Crager at bcrager@lewisstreetglass.com |
Home Improvement
2013-03-25 14:22:12
Dangers of breaking glass in a tornado
Q-With tornado season rearing its head again, and most homes not being “tornado proof”, how can I protect myself from flying glass in my home or office during a tornado?
A-If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’ve seen, as I have, that there are tornados developing in places where a tornado was a rare, if ever, occurrence in the past. Tornado Alley has begun to “spread out”. Having a shelter, or a safe room, built into your house can help you protect yourself and your family from injury or death caused by the dangerous forces of extreme winds. It can also relieve some of the anxiety created by the threat of an oncoming tornado season. Your question seems to be, should you consider building a shelter in your house to protect yourself and your family during a tornado or hurricane? The answer depends on your answers to several other important questions. Such as, do you live in what is considered a high risk area of the country for these storms, keeping the aforementioned topic in mind? How soon can you get to a safe shelter when you hear the sirens sound? And what level of safety do you want to provide for yourself and your family? Now is the best time to address those questions…not right after the sirens have sounded…agree?
During any windstorm, such as a tornado, hurricane, cyclone, or even straight-line winds of high velocity, everyone is at risk from flying everything! Glass included! If that storm is powerful enough to blow houses away, it’s a pretty good bet that your windows, no matter how good they are, are going to break and blow out too. Flying glass and all the other debris in a windstorm can be, and many times is, very deadly. Standing on a street downtown in a high windstorm is not a good idea at all. Those high winds can break the windows out of high rise office buildings and shower the sidewalks below with a deadly rain of glass shards. Get inside immediately in that situation, before the glass starts falling. Generally, if you’re paying attention to the weather at all, you’ll have some idea that there’s “tornado trouble” brewing for some time before it actually is upon us. Take that warning seriously every time!
You’ve all heard that if you don’t have a basement in your home, you should go to the middle of your home and get into a closet or a bathtub. I understand the logic of saying that…and getting more walls between you and the outdoors, but I still believe that you’re at very high risk of death or serious injury if you follow that instruction. I would only do that as a very last resort! High winds, whether twisting or moving across in a straight line can totally destroy, in many circumstances, most residential structures, and they’re especially deadly to inhabitants of mobile homes. That evidence is pretty clear, at least to me. Absent a basement, there are in-ground storm shelters available that can be installed in the floor of your garage, allowing you to get into them without going outside the house. Absent a garage, those same shelters can be installed right outside your back door allowing only a few steps from your door to the door on the shelter. That’s better, in my opinion, than staying inside the house in a bathtub or closet, hoping for the best. Very iffy.
During a storm, if the winds get high enough to break or blow out your windows, the hope is that with today’s radar and weather technology, you’ve had sufficient warning to move yourself and your family to a safe shelter to wait it out. Most tornadoes move laterally across the terrain at around 20+ miles per hour and some of these monster storms even achieve a lateral speed of over 40 mph. Outrunning an erratic, fast moving tornado in a vehicle is risky at best. Many have tried, and many have failed to get away. One of the problems with that strategy is that nothing will prevent other funnels from dropping down right on top of you as you’re trying to drive away from the storms.
Right now, while the weather is not threatening, it’s a good time to prepare in advance for what you and your family are going to do if that tornado siren sounds. If you’re at home or in your office or workplace when it happens, what’s the first thing you’re going to do? How much time do you have before it actually hits your home, office, or workplace? Where are the children and pets? Where is your spouse? In the absence of having thought out the answers to these and other questions, and then preparing a plan with each member of your family, you could end up with a terrible result from a windstorm. Flying glass and other debris can become a reality for you in just seconds. This is especially true if your home is located anywhere near “tornado alley”. As we alluded to earlier, tornados have been popping up in places not normally known for this particular type of windstorm.
Ideally, if you have a basement, start now and prepare a room down there where there are no windows, and try to have this space where there are 2 or more concrete basement walls right around you, as in a corner. If this space is a small space with walls surrounding you, and is equipped with a steel door with multiple deadbolt locks to hold it closed, your chances of avoiding death or injury are much improved. Go ahead and put an axe and/or battery powered saw, some fresh water in plastic jugs, some non perishable foods, a cell phone, a battery powered radio or television, a simple school bell you can use to get attention, and anything else you can think of to allow you to be in a survival mode for the next several minutes or even hours until someone can get to you for rescue operations. If you decide to “put this preparatory planning stuff off”, rather than getting it done now, how will you feel at that moment, when the skies turn black as midnight, and that storm siren begins to wail? Now that’s a change in pressure, and I don’t mean of the barometric kind!
There are some new, wind resistant type materials that are being sold for windows and doors in homes and businesses that can resist many of the day to day things that happen, and even some strong wind events, but if the wind is strong enough to cause debris such as cars and trucks, concrete or wood landscaping materials to go flying around you, it’s a good bet you’re going to need to think first of just living through it. Getting those windows replaced after the storm has passed you by will be a thought for another day…The good news is that the vast majority of homes have never seen a tornado or a hurricane, and hopefully, yours never will either…Your great full service local glass dealer can take care of any type of glass needs you may have at your house. And we’ll have more interesting stuff for you next month…
