Many Metro East warehouses don't have tornado shelters despite a low price tag [View all]

EDWARDSVILLE — Many warehouses in the Metro East don’t have tornado shelters or rooms that are designed to withstand extreme weather, despite their low overall cost.

Building permits show the average estimated cost of a new warehouse building in Edwardsville was more than $16 million between 2014 and 2019. The cost of a shelter only adds at most 2% to that overall total, said Jim Bell, director of operations for the National Storm Shelter Association.

“If you’re talking about putting some structures inside of your building so that your people will be safe, depending on how big you can go $20,000 to $30,000 up to a couple hundred thousand,” he said. “It’s not an astronomical price.”

There are many ways to add this type of space into a building, like a restroom or meeting room with its own reinforced walls and roof, Bell said.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/economy-business/2022-02-07/many-metro-east-warehouses-dont-have-tornado-shelters-despite-a-low-price-tag