CullmanTimes.com, Cullman, Alabama

Local News

March 17, 2009

Garden City to get shelter

By Tiffany Green

Garden City residents will soon have a safe place to go in times of severe weather after a recent grant for a community storm shelter.

Town officials awarded the storm shelter bid to Safe-T-Shelter, Aqua Marine Enterprises of Danville for $415,210 at Monday night’s council meeting. The council hopes the work will start as soon as possible.

“It all depends on when they can start working on it,” said Pam Leslie, town clerk. “But we want to as quickly as possible.”

The shelter will consist of five rooms each holding up to 96 people. The middle room will have bathrooms and a first aid station. The shelters provide a safe place during tornadoes, high winds, flying debris and ground strike lightning.

According to Aqua Marine’s Web site, the community storm shelters can be built in six to eight weeks.

The shelters are set and anchored to a reinforced, monolithic concrete pad foundation. They feature three heavy duty locks on the inside of the doors and a separate keyed lock on the outside for security purposes. The powered ventilation provides 15 cubic feet of fresh air per person per minute per FEMA requirements. They will be handicapped accessible.

The grant was for $513,128 with 25 percent matching from the town.

Leslie said the town will do some of the work itself.

“We will be doing some of the work ourselves, so it won’t be that much” she said.

In other news, the town’s maintenance supervisor announced the park is open. Eric Allred has done some repairs, but there is still a lot of work to be done, he said.

“It will be opened today,” Leslie said. “There are a few safety issues that have been taken care of.”

January flooding caused extensive damage to Garden City’s River Park. The walk way was washed up and many trees were downed due to the floods. Leslie said there are still some safety concerns, but the city wanted to go ahead and reopen it.

“There will be some barricades up where there are still safety concerns,” she said.

The park consists of 20 acres on the Mulberry Fork of the Warrior River. Mayor Harden Davis said the park’s work was set back, but it will continue.

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