The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recently has approved the International Code Council’s and the National Storm Shelter Association’s Standard on the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters, which provides design, construction, and performance of design regulations for residential safe rooms and community storm shelters.

The standard consolidates several previous references published by the NSSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (which has supported the new standard), and the Red Cross. Planning for worst-case scenarios, the level of wind resistance required for shelters and safe rooms under the new standard is based on rare but very strong storms. The Storm Shelter Standard is expected to be published in September 2008 for communities and municipalities to adopt, and will be recommended for adoption into the 2009 International Building Code and International Residential Code. For more details, visit www.iccsafe.org.