This course provides guidance for architects, engineers, building officials, local officials and emergency managers, and prospective safe room owners and operators about the design, construction, and operation of safe rooms and storm shelters, and for extreme-wind events. It presents important information about the design and construction of community safe rooms that will provide protection during tornado and hurricane events.
Having a safe room built for your home or small business can help provide “near-absolute protection” for you and your family or employees from injury or death caused by the dangerous forces of extreme winds. Near- absolute protection means that, based on our current knowledge of tornadoes and hurricanes, the occupants of a safe room built according to this guidance will have a very high probability of being protected from injury or death. Our knowledge of tornadoes and hurricanes is based on substantial meteorological records as well as extensive investigations of damage to buildings from extreme winds. It can also relieve some of the anxiety created by the threat of an oncoming tornado or hurricane. All information contained in this publication is applicable to safe rooms for use in homes as well as in small businesses.
We will be covering FEMA 361 Design and Construction "Guidance for Community Safe Rooms" chapter 7. In this chapter we will discuss debris impact performance criteria for safe rooms, their effect on the structure, and measures that can be taken to provide adequate protection.
- To complete the course you must pass a short 15 question multiple-choice/ true-false quiz.
