Community Safe Room Analysis

Community safe rooms can range in price even more than residential or small business rooms, as the variances are much greater. Because of the greater regulations implemented by FEMA, community rooms already cost more; in addition, some rooms are built for up to one hundred people while others can hold up to one thousand. The Southeast Missouri Medical Center in Jackson, Missouri built a community center that would be able to hold 2,000 residents throughout an area whose homes lacked basements or safe havens and contains a meeting room and kitchen which costed nearly $5 million to build (Atkinson, 2012). In the city of Mercedes, Texas, another safe room ran a total of $2.4 million to build. This community safe room was built to serve as a multi-purpose community center but to also provide 20,000 square feet worth of protection from severe natural disasters and includes everything to satisfy functional needs and ease of access (United States: FEMA awards, 2012). In the Joplin School
For residential homes and some small businesses, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began loaning money in 2003 for safe room shelters for work that is eligible in the form of rehabilitation loans and new construction financing (FEMA, 2015). Any safe rooms built in a mortgage which is FHA-insured must be in compliance with FEMA standards. FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) is typically given for community improvements, but many times can provide assistance to individuals within a community as well as long as they meet the standard requirements set forth. HMGP funds characteristically aid in the retrofitting of structures to help protect from severe floods, strong winds, earthquakes, and other natural hazards while also helping to create residential and community safe rooms in high tornado-prone areas (FEMA,