Safety is always on Sugarcreek township firefighter and father Ken Collier’s mind.
"After the Memorial Day tornadoes last year it kind of kicked it into high gear," he explained.
Despite being on high alert, his family lives with the reality their Brookville home does not have a basement. The night of the Memorial Day tornado outbreak, he and his wife raced back to their home to be with their kids and weather the storms.
"So we got here about 10 minutes before the tornado hit," he said.
That night, the Collier family’s safe spot was a bathroom. That changed in March when Collier had a tornado shelter installed in his garage.
The above ground, Oklahoma-built shelter cost about $6,000. The Colliers started saving two years ago, eventually applying for the Ohio Safe Room Rebate program, which state leaders started in 2014.
"Eligible home owners can apply for the program and if they are randomly selected then they can be reimbursed up to 75 percent of the cost of putting in a tornado safe room, " Ohio EMA spokesperson Jay Carey said.
After the Memorial Day tornado outbreak, Carey said the number of applicants for this program doubled from 400 to more than 800 people. Collier was one of those applicants.
However, the Colliers were not one of the 50 families randomly chosen using a computer drawing. That did not stop them. They continued to save. When Collier's father died in December, they used money he left them to build their shelter.
"We didn't know what to do with it: we didn't really want the money, we wanted him back. He always worries about us taking care of our family and taking care of us so we invested and got that," he explained.
Families are notified if they will receive the grant money each April.
"There's in person meetings and some particulars of the program. It has to be built by a licensed contractor. It has to meet the national storm shelter association parameters. Particularly when it comes to the door," Carey said.
Southwest Ohio is generally where EMA data shows most of the 145 storm shelters are located. Since 1950, the National Weather Service also reports 23 of the 63 EF3 or stronger tornadoes have happened in the Miami Valley.
Even though there was a huge homeowners interest last year in building tornado shelters, Carey said the amount of money FEMA gives the state EMA likely will not increase.
“We are not able to get any more funds,” Carey said. “We just get what we get from FEMA for this but we are looking to continue this program in the years ahead.”.
Middletown’s Granger Plastics builds tornado safe rooms across the country. They cost about $7,400. General Manager Shawn Cravens has worked with many Ohio families receiving state rebates.
"The business is very heavily driven on demand in weather outbreak. the more severe the weather outbreak, the more frequent the weather outbreak, the more sales and the more demand for the product there typically exists," Cravens explained.
With no basement, and after continuing to repair buildings the Memorial Day tornadoes damaged, Rolling and Sliding Doors of Dayton owner Bob Zugelder decided to install a Granger Plastics tornado shelter in his business’s back yard.
“You’ve seen a crumbled metal buildings in the event of a tornado and you’re chance of living through one of those could be slim to none,” Zugelder said. “So I just think it is a wise decision for all homeowners and business people.”
If you do not have a tornado shelter in your home or business, you can still stay safe from a tornado. What is most important is that you take immediate action when a tornado warning is issued.
Remember this simple word, DUCK.
Get Down to the lowest level of a building
Get Under something sturdy
Cover your head
Keep safe until an all clear is given.