A bathroom can be a safe tornado shelter. This family is proof.

The Washington Post quoted Teng Wu, associate professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, in a story about an Indiana family that sought shelter in their hallway bathroom and listened while a tornado destroyed the rest of the home.

Wu said that bathrooms may be a safer option if there isn’t a basement available, but warned there’s no guarantee that bathrooms will keep people safe during tornadoes because of the variations in the way homes are built. 

“Although the bathrooms are usually treated as a relatively safe place to hide during a tornado, they are not designed [to be] tornado-proof,” Wu said. “Their resistance to tornadoes is not guaranteed.”

Read the story here.