当一个强大的EF-4龙卷风上周，爱荷华州格林菲尔德的志愿消防队队长TJ·奥德表示，他的房子直接遭到了袭击。尽管如此，他在2014年建造住所时安装的私人龙卷风避难所挽救了他的家人。
奥德说，当龙卷风袭击时，他正在帮助准备一个分流中心，以治疗受伤的邻居并将他们送往医院，而他的家人则躲在他的个人避难所里。
奥德告诉ABC新闻:“我的祖母、我的女友和她的儿子，以及我所有的动物都在里面，当它直接击中我的房子时，他们都幸免于难。”
至少有四人死亡，35人受伤绿地龙卷风官员们说，但在整个地区，由于龙卷风来袭时人们靠近公共避难所，或者像奥德这样的龙卷风就在自己家门口几步之遥，许多人的生命得以挽救。
奥德说:“自这件事发生以来，我接触过的许多人都说他们将进行重建，并考虑安装一个。
密西西比州的气象学家克雷格·茜茜说他创建了这个网站findyourtornadoshelter.com他在密西西比河谷州立大学读博士生时，绘制了全国所有公共龙卷风避难所的地图。他说，他的论文重点是公共龙卷风避难所的可用性、使用情况以及宣传方式。
“首先，我们需要知道它们的存在，这基本上就是地图的来源，”Ceecee告诉ABC新闻。“我觉得这在许多地区都很重要，因为许多人住在移动房屋里，或者他们没有地下室，或者他们的建筑比人们意识到的要脆弱得多。”
茜茜说他的研究发现，当龙卷风来袭时，大多数人不知道离他们最近的公共龙卷风避难所在哪里，他们被迫使用住宅的室内房间或浴室来度过风暴。
根据美国国家海洋和大气管理局的数据，在过去的四十年里，雷达技术和风暴建模的进步大大缩短了龙卷风预警的准备时间。在20世纪70年代和80年代，龙卷风警报发出后到达避难所的平均时间是3分钟。
“现在龙卷风警报的平均预警时间是13分钟，”Ceecee说。“时间还是不多。”
Ceecee说，农村地区一些容易发生龙卷风的地区没有公共龙卷风避难所，或者距离人们的房屋数英里远，因此在漏斗云迅速逼近时试图前往这些地区太危险了。
“你必须确保你提前到达那里，它是开放的，因为你不想在龙卷风来袭时开车。塞西说:“坐在车里非常危险。”“与汽车相比，你最好呆在家里的室内。“
史蒂夫·斯特鲁姆是一名气象学家，住在俄克拉荷马州布罗肯阿罗，这里被称为“龙卷风走廊”的中心。他说，大约五年前，他所在的镇申请并获得了联邦应急管理局的拨款，帮助居民支付费用，于是他在车库里安装了一个私人地下龙卷风避难所。
斯特鲁姆说，他的预制帐篷可容纳8人，成本约为3500至4000美元，不包括安装费用。他说，他从联邦应急管理局收到了大约2500美元，以帮助推迟费用。
“我的家庭只有三口人:我的妻子、儿子，还有两只90磅重的实验室。斯特鲁姆说，他为自己的避难所安装了电池供电的灯和便携式厕所，并储备了水、食物和其他供应品，可以维持一天以上。
但斯特鲁姆说，一些较小的避难所价格低至2000美元，在一些五金店可以买到。
“最大的成本实际上是安装。在某些情况下，安装成本可能高于实际的避难所，”斯特鲁姆告诉ABC新闻。
斯特鲁姆说，虽然他和他的家人有一些侥幸脱险，但他们还不得不在龙卷风中使用他们的避难所。在安装避难所之前，他说他和他的家人会戴上自行车头盔，进入他们家的一个室内房间，用枕头、垫子和毯子缓冲自己。
斯特鲁姆说:“我们主要是为那些半夜有风暴、你必须马上躲避的事件准备的。”“拥有易于获取的东西是我们拥有它的原因之一。所以我们可以迅速打开门，在几秒钟内就可以安全应对那些可能在凌晨3点袭击的龙卷风，而你正在睡觉。”
As tornado season ramps up, more people are turning to private home shelters to survive
When a powerfulEF-4 tornadoripped through Greenfield, Iowa, last week TJ Oder, the chief of the town's volunteer fire department, said his house took a direct hit. Still, his family was saved by a private tornado shelter he had installed when he built his residence in 2014.
Oder said that when the twister struck, he was helping to prepare a triage center to treat injured neighbors and get them to hospitals while his family members were hunkered down in his personal shelter.
“My grandmother, my girlfriend and her son, and all my animals were in it, and they all survived when it directly hit my house," Oder told ABC News.
At least four people were killed and 35 were injured in theGreenfield twister, but throughout the area, many lives were saved due to people being close to a public shelter as the twister bore down or having one like Oder just steps away in their own home, officials said.
“A lot of people I've talked to since this happened said that they were going to rebuild and are thinking about putting one in," Oder said.
Craig Ceecee, a meteorologist in Mississippi, said he created the websitefindyourtornadoshelter.com, which maps out every public tornado shelter available in the nation, while he was a doctoral student at Mississippi Valley State. He said his dissertation was focused on the availability of public tornado shelters, how much they're used and how they are publicized.
"First, we need to be knowledgeable that they exist, which is basically where the map came from," Ceecee told ABC News. "It's something I feel is important in a lot of areas because many people live in mobile homes, or they don't have basements, or their buildings are a lot weaker than people realize."
Ceecee said his research found that most people didn't know the location of their closest public tornado shelter when a twister hit and were forced to use an interior room or bathroom of their residences to ride out the storm.
Over the past four decades, advances in radar technology and storm modeling have improved tornado warning lead times dramatically, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the 1970s and 1980s, the average tornado lead time to get to a shelter following a tornado warning was three minutes.
"Now the average lede time for a tornado warning is 13 minutes," Ceecee said. "That's still not a lot of time."
Ceecee said some tornado-prone areas in rural counties don't have public tornado shelters or are miles away from people's houses, making it too dangerous to attempt to get to during a rapidly approaching funnel cloud.
"You've got to make sure you get there in advance, and it's open because you don't want to be driving when there's a tornado coming your way. A car is extremely dangerous to be in," Ceecee said. "You're better off in the interior room of a home as opposed to a car."
Steve Strum, a meteorologist who lives in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in the heart of what's been dubbed "Tornado Alley," said he had a private in-ground tornado shelter installed in his garage about five years ago after his town applied for and received a FEMA block grant to help residents pay for them.
Strum said his prefab shelter, which seats eight people, cost about $3,500 to $4,000, not including installation. He said he received about $2,500 from the FEMA to help defer costs.
"My family is just three of us: My wife, my son and then we have two 90-pound labs. So we can all fit in here," said Strum, who fitted his shelter with battery-operated lights and a portable toilet and stocked it with water, food and other supplies to last more than a day.
But Strum said some smaller shelters cost as low as $2,000 and are available at some hardware stores.
"The biggest cost is actually the installation. The installation costs can be higher than the actual shelter in some cases," Strum told ABC News.
Strum said that while he and his family have had some close calls, they've yet had to use their shelter in a tornado. Before installing the shelter, he said he and his family would put on bicycle helmets and get into an interior room of their home, cushioning themselves with pillows, pads and blankets.
"We mainly got it for those events where you would have a storm in the middle of the night, and you had to take shelter right away," Strum said. "Having something that's easily accessible is kind of why we have it. So we can quickly open the door, and in a matter of seconds be safe for those tornadoes that might hit like 3:00 in the morning and you're sleeping."
