Home Creations vs. Oklahoma Tornadoes

In case you haven’t heard, things got a little weather scary in Oklahoma last night. Whether they were high winds or tornadoes, something passed through the Oklahoma City metro yesterday afternoon and evening that left a scattered path of twisted metal, debris and everything but the kitchen sink in its wake.

Oklahoma is no stranger to tornadoes. Unfortunately, they happen here every now and then. Fortunately, though, the Oklahoma City area hasn’t been the victim of one quite so harsh as the tornado that tore through here on May 3, 1999. Lives were lost, and the damage count was in the millions.

One good thing that came out of the May 3 tornado was a change in Home Creations construction methods – an all-out-effort to construct a safer home, one better suited to withstand Oklahoma’s terrible twisters.

In the days following May 3, Home Creations owners Jalal and Mohammad Farzaneh surveyed the damaged neighborhoods with Harold Conner, former Director of Construction Science at the University of Oklahoma. Based upon the way the homes blew apart, Conner concluded that if a roof remains on a structure during high winds or tornadoes, the amount of damage is greatly reduced.

“Harold looked at properties and devised a tornado resistant system,” Jalal said in a 2006 interview in the Norman Transcript. Conner added tornado straps to secure rafters, exterior wall bracing with oriented strand board and J-bolts (also known as anchor bolts) anchoring a home’s framework to its concrete stem wall. “He estimated homes with this system would withstand an F3 tornado – or 90 percent of all tornadoes that occur,” Jalal said.

Mohammad said the majority of conventionally built homes will lose their roofs in winds approaching 115 miles per hour. “So the whole structure is weakened and collapses. Our system ties down the roof joists and rafters to exterior walls down to the foundation. If windows and doors are broken and the house is twisted on its foundation, the occupants are still safe,” he said.

While Home Creations believes that nothing can make a home tornado-proof, the three tornado safety features built into every one of our homes – tornado straps, anchor bolts and oriented strand board sheathing – give Oklahoma’s bad weather some strong man competition.

We hope our homeowners will never realize the benefits of Home Creations three tornado safety features that, by the way, exceed local building codes. Over the years, we’ve seen first-hand that they work.

After last night’s spectacular weather show, the tornado safety features work together like a well-oiled machine and do what they’re meant to do – make our homes better suited to withstand Oklahoma’s temperamental, fierce and threatening nasty weather.

Tornado Straps

Some parts of the country call them hurricane straps, but the benefit is the same anywhere. Tornado straps anchor the top plate of the home to the rafters, keeping roofs more secure in high winds.

Anchor Bolts

The name says it all – anchor bolts, also called J bolts due to their shape, anchor the bottom plate of a home to the stem wall. The benefit comes from sinking them eight inches into the concrete of the stem wall, and the J shape locks them in place.

OSB Sheathing

OSB stands for oriented strand board, which is a strong sheathing that gets its strength from the alternating orientation of the layers of wood. We install OSB around the entire perimeter of our homes rather than foam board.

Jan Sperry Astani
Marketing Director
Home Creations