Where Can I Find Doors and Hardware for My Safe Room?
For safe room doors to reliably provide life-safety protection during a tornado, they must be rigorously designed, constructed, and tested. The manufacturers of safe room door assemblies must certify that their products have passed ICC 500 testing to meet or exceed FEMA safe room criteria.
Successful certification of compliance is required to be demonstrated via labels that are attached to approved doors by third-party certification agencies, such as UL (Underwriters Laboratories). Consumers should verify the door assembly’s compliance with ICC 500 for a tornado wind speed of 250 mph by carefully checking the door’s certification label, which contains information on impact and design pressure performance. In addition to having passed required testing for tornado missile impact and pressure, the door assembly should be easily locked and unlocked so that access to and from the safe room is quick and easy.
Available third-party certification agency testing can be found at:
- UL Online Certification Directory: After registering for a free account, log into “UL Product iQ” directory and enter “ICC 500” under “Start your search” to find products that have passed ICC 500 testing.
- Intertek Online Certification Directory: Under “Standard,” select “ICC-500” from the pull-down menu and click on “Search” for a list of products that have passed testing for the appropriate edition ICC 500.
- National Accreditation & Management Institute (NAMI) Online Certification Directory: Under ‘SPECIFICATION,’ select ICC 500 for compliant products
More information can be found in FEMA’s Residential Tornado Safe Room Doors Fact Sheet and Community Tornado Safe Room Doors Fact Sheet.