Boy, are we safe

As much as we like Spring--weather turning warmer, days getting longer, foilage coming back to life--the threat of tornados ruins it for us.

When we went to buy a new house Uchenna was determined to safeguard his family and his peace of mind. But there are very few basements around here. In Ponca, they said it was due to high water table; here in Bartlesville, it's because you hit bedrock pretty quick. Apparently, excavating through bedrock is incredibly costly. In spite of these challenges, Uchenna found a solution: he negotiated for a steel safe room to be installed in the garage. Just keep that in mind if you ever have to strike a deal with him--he can sure barGAIN (as he says).

So a week after we moved in, the safe room company rep came to check out our premises. He declared our site acceptable, with good concrete and plenty of space. It's a relief to know we have good concrete, since that isn't usually addressed in the inspection (light sarcasm), but we didn't quite believe him about the space. Because once we pulled the car in (which we somehow neglected to do while shopping for the house), the garage shrunk dramatically.

After he left, we kept measuring. I set up a box so that it created a wall four feet out from the back of the garage--the alleged size of the safe room--then pulled in the car and made sure the garage door would close without taking off the back bumper. It was good, but barely. No room for crooked parking.

Then a couple of weeks later, the safe room itself showed up. The installers had to push back the appointment by a day, because the day before we'd had torrential (and I don't use that word lightly) rains. Our appointment was in the afternoon, while the morning appointment was at a new construction site. They had tried to talk that guy into rescheduling, but I guess he had to keep to his construction deadlines. Anyway, the equipment got impossibly mired in all the mud and took the rest of the day to get unstuck.

So the next morning two guys brought the safe room. Basically it's exactly what it says it is: a steel safe the size of a small room. More like a closet, actually, but "safe closet" is unweildy to say. Also it has a deadbolt rather than a combination lock, but more on that later.

They maneuvered the shiny white box, still smelling of fresh spray paint, into the before-determined spot and bolted it into place. It looked like heavy work--pushing the heavily laden dolly, drilling through concrete, pounding the bolts into place, and vacuuming up all the concrete dust (okay, that last one was more like the cool-down).

(He's using a version of a stud finder to find possible rebar. There wasn't any, but the concrete was at least a couple of inches thick, so it was all good.)

They gave me my briefing. Let's just say they take security very seriously. The safe room and its location are registered with the American Storm Shelter Association, so if a devastating event occurs, the Association can alert first responders to the site of possible survivors. That's almost a direct quote.

(On the top you can see the air vents and at the back you can see an electrical input. You can plug in an extension cord on the outside and a light or a fan on the inside. But as the installer pointed out, during a storm you often lose power anyway.)

Then there are the deadbolts: three of them, with a ledge on the outside of the door that makes the bolts impossible to reach and therefore cut through. Also the keys can only be duplicated at one particular locksmith shop in Tulsa, and then only by those people previously authorized (Uchenna and myself--I had to write our names on a little card that they'll apparently keep on file). So we can be sure that in the event of damaging winds (including tornado) or human attack (which we're not concerned about out here but, hey, it's good to know), we'll be safe in our safe room.

One final note, we really do have enough room to park the car. Shwew. We aim for that gap to the left of the steel closet and drive in slowly. If we remember to stand up that black plastic tube (an attachement to our leaf blower), we inch forward until we knock it over. Otherwise we just guess. We could also bump right up against the wall of the safe room, but as I said before, that doesn't leave much room for error (about an inch and a half leeway when you line it up straight). And as the very presence of the safe room attests, we aren't interested in risk.