Tornado Resistance

Over the last two decades, we have seen more interest to include in buildings a place of safety during severe storm events, particularly for schools, assisted living facilities, offices, and gathering spaces. Damaging and life threatening events across the central plains have emphasized the need for tornado shelters, and recent building codes now include provisions which require storm shelters for particular types of facilities.

Dudley Williams & Associates has considerable experience with tornado resistant construction. We have designed over 200 structures for the code provisions included in the FEMA 361 and ICC 500 documents as well as residential shelters for the provisions of FEMA 320. Shelter sizes have varied from single home residential shelters to large capacity multipurpose gymnasium shelters. Construction materials have included masonry, precast concrete, cast-in-place concrete, and steel framing.

Dudley Williams & Associates has also assessed building damage resulting from extreme wind events and provided recommendations concerning access and occupancy of the buildings during recovery operations as well as recommendations for partial or complete building demolition. We have completed designs to repair and/or supplement wind damaged structures.