Joplin tornado spurs Habitat's safe rooms

Photos by James R. Campbell/Daily Mail Habitat for Humanity board member Joe Sunthimer, left, talks with Twister Safe Co. installers Trevor Haile, center, and Matthew Ogle of Neosho Thursday at the 501 E. Lee St. home that Habitat is finishing. They installed a steel room in which homeowners may hide during severe weather.

By James R. Campbell

Nevada Daily Mail

Soon after the catastrophic Joplin tornado in May 2011, Nevada Area Habitat for Humanity directors voted to put a steel-reinforced safe room in each of the new homes they provided for families who would not otherwise be able to afford one.

Habitat for Humanity Treasurer Darryl Wright, on the ground, greets National TV Sales & Rental Manager Pam Bozworth and installer Luke Dieters outside the East Lee Street home that Wright's organiation is completing. The Nevada company has donated a washer and dryer to Habitat in each of the past four years.

The Twister Safe Co. of Neosho pitched in with an offer to install such an indestructible room in each home for half price, or $2,000, for a 4-by-5-foot hideaway with a 6-foot, 4-inch ceiling with steel walls, secured with 12 big bolts to a concrete floor. Often the structures are placed in the garage, but sometimes they are installed elsewhere in or around the house.

Helping finish a new three-bedroom house for Angel Lukenbill and her son and two daughters, Thursday, at 501 E. Lee St., Nevada, longtime Habitat board member Joe Sunthimer, of Nevada, said it was the third local abode to be equipped with a storm-proof alternative.

"It's just like insurance," Sunthimer said.

"You buy insurance and hope you never need it; but there would have been fewer deaths in Joplin if they had had more of these. It won't save your house, but it will save your life.

"The only way you could move it is to pick up the whole floor. The board has decided we should put one in every house we build."

Suthimer said Twister Safe also has installed a safe room in each of the homes Habitat volunteers have built in the past 16 months -- one in the 900 block of North Oak Street and one in the 500 block of South Chestnut.

He said Erwin Construction, one of a number of local companies that support Habitat, began the East Lee Street project last February, laying the foundation and putting up the frame to prepare for Sunthimers' volunteers to work on the roof.

National TV Sales & Rental Manager Pam Bozsworth and employee Luke Dieters arrived with an Amana washer and dryer they were donating just as Twister Safe installers Trevor Haile and Matthew Ogle were leaving, Thursday afternoon.

Met by Sunthimer and Habitat for Humanity Treasurer Darryl Wright, Bozworth said her company has given a washer and dryer to the group in each of the past four years.

Haile said his company has been in business since 2004, but interest in its products understandably increased a great deal after the Joplin tornado, which, according to references, killed 158 people, injured 1,000, destroyed 2,000 buildings and 7,000 homes and left $2.8 billion in damages.

Haile said seven of Twister Safe's rooms saved lives in the Joplin area during the late afternoon May 22, 2011, EF-5, multiple vortex tornado strike.

Gesturing at the impregnable-looking structure he had just bolted down at the Habitat home, Haile said, "This is No. 300 since the tornado.

"We have also put them in Little Rock, Ark., and Manhattan, Lawrence and Carbondale, Kan., near Topeka."

Sunthimer said the Lukenbill home is the 13th constructed since 1996 by the Nevada Area Habitat for Humanity, which is headed by Board President Bob Beaver. He said the organization will start taking applications for its next house in January, at Haggan's Real Estate, 131 E. Walnut St., (417) 667-6714.