Despite deadly tornadoes, no place in Iowa requires storm shelters in homes, apartments

A busy, deadly year for tornadoes in Iowa and the 50th anniversary of a twister that devastated Ankeny are reminders of the hazards Iowans face — and that many people have less than ideal places in which to shelter.

Sheltering in a basement or interior room on the ground floor is best during a tornado, but those aren't always available options, especially in multistory apartment and townhome buildings.

A modern home or apartment building without a basement or interior room is generally safer than an older residence that also doesn't have one, according to Ian Giammanco, a national expert who advocates for more uniform and stronger building codes.

But no place in the Des Moines metro — or anywhere else in the United States, according to Giammanco — requires storm shelters for homes or apartments. And there's decades' worth of older residential construction that's more vulnerable to collapse in high winds.

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Newer code provisions require shelters in facilities such as schools, government buildings and hospitals, said Giammanco, who is the managing director of codes and lead research meteorologist for the South Carolina and Florida-based Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

“Outside of that, that is it. In the United States, we don’t have tornado provisions as a whole — shelters or design provisions — in our residential construction," he said.

However, even without enhanced building code requirements to at least further strengthen residences, there still are ways for cost-conscious developers and residents who don't have a basement or interior room to create more safety during a tornado.

Worst tornado since 1950 in the metro was in Ankeny

It may be easy to think of tornadoes as hazards that mainly affect small towns in rural Iowa or the edges of the Des Moines metro area.

This year, on April 26, an EF3 tornado in Minden killed one person, injured three others, destroyed 48 homes and damaged about 40% of the town. An EF2 tornado on the same day touched down in southeast Des Moines, hit Pleasant Hill and left at least 18 homes uninhabitable there.

On May 21, an EF4 tornado killed five people and in particularly hard-hit Greenfield injured 35 others and damaged or destroyed about 150 homes. An EF2 tornado on the same day touched down near Johnston High School and traveled 41 miles northeast to Zearing.

More: Digging into Iowa's historic 2024 tornado season: How rare was Greenfield's EF-4 tornado?

But both of the most powerful tornadoes that have hit the Des Moines metro since 1950 went through Ankeny. The worst of the two F4 twisters killed two people and injured 50 others on June 18, 1974, as it traveled southeast into Des Moines. It was on the ground for more than 15 miles.

Husband and wife Wallace L. and Mable White, who were killed on Trilein Drive in Ankeny, died beneath the rubble of their home, according to Des Moines Register archives. The Des Moines Tribune described homes as having been “un-roofed or splintered into kindling." Up to 25% of homes in Ankeny at the time had been seriously damaged.

Five of the then-six schools in Ankeny were extensively damaged. Shopping centers, a Hy-Vee and other businesses were destroyed. In Des Moines, parts of buildings at the Iowa State Fairgrounds collapsed. Pleasant Hill also was hit hard.

Dennis Ballard, who was Ankeny's police chief when the tornado hit, told an Ankeny High School class interviewing him in 2010 that it took about six months to get the city completely cleaned up and back in order, and a year and a half to fully rebuild.

His home on Walnut Street had windows pulled out and shingles missing.

"My neighbors had houses that were lifted off the foundations and turned," Ballard said in the interview, preserved by the Ankeny Area Historical Society.

Property damage in 1974 values was estimated to be near $20 million.

The other F4 tornado that hit Ankeny, on Sept. 28, 1986, leveled at least seven homes and damaged more than 30 others on its way east to Jasper County.

Both tornadoes would likely be rated rare EF5 twisters in the present-day, based on a comparison of wind speed ranges.

From Jan. 1, 1950, through April 23, 2022, the most recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, 116 tornadoes in Polk and Dallas counties killed two people, injured 151 others and caused more than $128 million in property damage, not adjusted for inflation.

Shelter, building design requirements are not uniform

Many Des Moines metro cities require storm shelters in schools and mobile home parks. But, despite its past hardships, not even Ankeny requires residential storm shelters.

Altoona, Ankeny, Bondurant, Clive, Des Moines, Grimes, Johnston, Pleasant Hill, Urbandale, Waukee and West Des Moines all require through their building codes that schools with occupant capacities of 50 or more people have storm shelters. Most cities have exceptions for small day care facilities and religious education spaces attached to places of worship.

Windsor Heights' city clerk and spokesperson Adam Strait said in an email that while the city's code does not currently require shelters for schools, "Windsor Heights is currently reviewing adoption of a newer version of the International Building Code that would include this requirement. Many commercial buildings in Windsor Heights were constructed prior to the current ICC standards requiring shelters, however buildings such (as) Clive Learning Academy do include shelters."

Altoona, Johnston, Urbandale, West Des Moines and Windsor Heights have storm shelter requirements for mobile home parks, as state law allows for mobile home parks built after July 1, 1999. Urbandale also has a similar storm shelter requirement for RV parks and campgrounds.

Iowa's building code also does not require storm shelters, unless otherwise required by state or federal law.

Giammanco said Moore, Oklahoma, remains the only local U.S. jurisdiction not located on a hurricane-prone coast that has an enhanced building code for wind protection features — though even Moore, which has sustained three hits by F5, F4 and EF5 tornadoes within 14 years, does not require residential tornado shelters.

Even so, Giammanco said it's a norm in the central Oklahoma real estate and homebuilding markets that they're included anyway. He said it was an EF5 tornado that killed 25 people in May 2013 that finally prompted the change in Moore's building codes to require stronger structures and garage doors.

But even without such enhanced protections, Giammanco said modern buildings are still less likely to completely collapse than older or substandard construction.

That’s because in modern construction the roof is more likely to blow away before the walls cave in, preventing the building from falling in on itself. The risk of a total collapse is higher in residences built from the early 1960s through the early 1990s, he said.

Along with mobile homes, older and substandard-built residences are where many tornado deaths stem from “when the wall to foundation connections go first,” Giammanco said.

Under a modern code, "when enforced and inspected for, fatalities in (modern) structures are exceptionally rare," he said.

But the Federal Emergency Management Agency found in an earthquake, flood and hurricane-focused study that as of November 2020, 65% of U.S. counties, cities and towns had not adopted a modern building code, which FEMA considers as anything adopted after 2000.

Iowa does have modern building codes but the system is a bit complicated. David Ruffcorn, state building code commissioner with the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals, & Licensing, said in an email that Iowa is a "hybrid home rule state," which means some codes are statewide and others are by jurisdiction.

Most jurisdictions and the state as a whole have adopted building codes from the International Code Council, but they vary by the adopted edition or code year, Ruffcorn explained.

The state and some jurisdictions have adopted most codes from the 2015 ICC edition, but many Des Moines metro cities have adopted 2018 codes and are looking at adopting more recent editions. Contractors are also free to build above code, Ruffcorn said.

More: The 2024 NOAA hurricane season forecast is unlike any other. See the record predictions.

How to be safer even without a basement or closet

Basements and reinforced storm shelters do save lives. None of the three properties where six people died in the March 2022 tornado in Winterset had basements, according to the Madison County Assessor's Office.

But even though the ground under most Iowa homes allows for basements to be built, builders who are mindful of costs and aging homebuyers who want single-level designs have moved away from including them, Dan Knoup, executive officer with the Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines, told the Register in 2022.

More: Basements are a decisive factor in tornado survival. But in Iowa, homes increasingly lack them

Giammanco said he hopes grant programs are expanded to retrofit older homes with in-home shelters, such as in garages.

Iowa does not have a FEMA residential safe room grant program, according to Allie Bright, spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. It was not immediately clear what other options might be available for federal funds.

Bright said in an email that funding is available for community safe rooms in or near schools, community buildings, ball fields, campgrounds and other such places, but many federal requirements are involved.

Giammanco pointed to the provisions in Moore, Oklahoma's, building codes as well as codes from coastal hurricane zones as things home developers and builders anywhere can look to if they want to incorporate features that make homes more resilient but that aren't full basements or reinforced interior rooms.

"Are they going to stop all damage in violent tornadoes? No. But you are going to give folks a much better life safety outlook," he said.

And even short of including enhanced structural wind protections, Giammanco said builders in their designs can "think about making sure there is a place for a family to go," even if that's just a closet in an interior space on the first floor.

"That will give you some great cost-effective options," as an interior space will at least protect from flying debris, he said.

But if a tornado warning siren is blaring and none of those options is available, a bathtub will at least offer some protection from flying debris. And a bathroom's plumbing gives some amount of added structural strength, Giammanco said.

Another option is an interior hallway, but a bathroom "is always the best place, if you have nowhere else to go — even if it's on an exterior wall and has a window. Get in the tub, put something over you, and you get the best shot there," he added.

Phillip Sitter covers the western suburbs for the Des Moines Register. Phillip can be reached via email at psitter@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @pslifeisabeauty.  

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: No place in Iowa, U.S. requires tornado shelters in homes, apartments