The recent spate of large tornadoes striking the southern plains has emphasized a frightening and humbling fact – there are few shelters that can truly protect us from the destructive power of 200 mile per hour winds.
Just last Friday, Oklahomans who thought they could drive away from an oncoming storm found that the combination of rush hour traffic and a sudden influx of other panicked citizens clogged the escape routes and left everyone more exposed than they were before they left their homes.
When I was growing up in Montrose, New York, in the 1960’s, my father decided to build a fallout shelter alongside the house. It was his response to the ongoing cold war with the Soviet Union. The walls of our shelter were made of thick, poured concrete, reinforced with iron. Air shafts went to the surface so we could breathe. A dehumidifier, bunk beds, and a few cases of water and dehydrated rations were in place. We were all convinced a nuclear attack could come at any moment, reducing our house and the entire world, really, to a smoldering, radioactive wasteland unable to sustain life.
I will always admire my father for his determined effort to protect us, but there was no real plan for survival after the first strike. We just wanted to outlive our neighbors, the McInernys. When the air raid sirens went off, I wasn’t sure how we were going to tell them they couldn’t come in and share our dank hole in the ground, but I knew that might be necessary.
Fortunately, it never became an issue, and the fallout shelter wound up being a very secure home for spiders. I assume it’s still there, and will probably be the one piece of construction I was associated with that will last long after I’m gone.
But I pray nobody ever feels a need to use it.
Where is your safe place?
Trail Baboon 