For your safe room, skip the duct tape

So my newspaper, the Raleigh News and Observer, had a quickie feature in the Life section giving advice for preparing for a hurricane. Part of the story talked about safe rooms: a sturdy room in your home where you can ride out the storm:

SAFE ROOMS

A safe room is the best protection in a tornado. To build one using Federal Emergency Management Agency specifications, go to www.fema.gov and search “safe room.” Pre-fabricated rooms are available for less than $5,000. The National Storm Shelter Association ( www.nssa.cc) lists verified safe room vendors.

That’s all fine and good. We’ve got a “safe room” designated and the family has met there before during tornado warnings. However, the picture next to the article showed some genius taping the door of his safe room with duct tape. The caption reads: “Keep duct tape handy to seal a ‘safe room.'”

Having been through a hurricane or three (and now one tornado), I can tell you that duct tape is next to worthless for protecting your home during a storm. In fact, the list of “hurricane kit” items provided by the article doesn’t even mention duct tape. All the duct tape in the world wouldn’t have kept trees from flattening the homes on neighboring N. King Charles Rd. or the homes on Serendipity Drive from being shredded. Now, during my CERT training I saw the value of duct tape after a storm (making a splint, marking hazards, closing unsafe passages, making nametags, etc.), but I’m sure as hell not going to waste it ahead of time by taping up the frickin’ door.

I think the photo dates from the idiotic duct-tape hysteria stirred up during George W. Bush’s War On Terra, just in case Osama Bin Laden was hiding in your backyard. If there’s a good chance ol’ OBL won’t be knocking on your door (and last I heard he’s now dead), I’d say it’s safe to skip duct taping the door.