Steel Building Provides Home Away From Home during Hurricanes

In 2004 and 2005, Aubrey Brown was living a quiet life in Clanton, Ala., passing the time spinning his wheels to create pottery to sell at craft shows around the region. But it was during those two years that Brown and his wife came under the attack of unwelcome visitors on three separate occasions. The intruders pounded on the doors and windows, bellowing out their insatiable demands and leaving chaos and destruction in their wake. To be fair, it wasn’t just the Brown family who found themselves at the mercy of these adversaries. Their whole community and most of the state were frantically doing everything they could to protect themselves from the treacherous reach of Hurricanes Ivan, Dennis, and Katrina.

Like everyone else, Brown gathered supplies and battened down the hatches in preparation of the storms—but as many of his neighbors made their way to the local shelter, Brown moved his family into their steel shed, which housed their motor home.

“My SteelMaster shed can withstand 140 mph winds, which is more than I can say about my house,” says Brown. “Before each storm hit, I stocked the motor home with bottled water and food, gassed up the tank, made sure the generator was working, and then my wife and 82-year-old mother and I hunkered down until the hurricanes passed.”

As the family watched shingles fly off the roof of their workshop and trees bow

in half to touch the ground, Brown said they had nary a worry from their vantage point inside the steel shed that he bought years before from SteelMaster Buildings in Virginia Beach, Va.

“My wife and I travel a lot in our 32-foot motor home from craft show to craft show, so I bought the shed to house it in and keep it out of the sun during the off season,” says Brown. “I also store all of my welders and cutting torch and tools for mechanical and farm repair in the shed. Anytime the weather is too cold or raining, I just back the motor home out, pull in what needs to be repaired, and fix it. When it is real cold, I lower the 12 by 12 door and use a patio heater to work in comfort."

The versatility of a SteelMaster building and roofing system goes a long way with the company’s thousands of customers, many of whom have worked along with SteelMaster engineers to custom design their building to meet their very specific needs. “SteelMaster offers unique custom solutions for building applications such as architectural design, affordable steel housing, athletic facilities, retail stores/business facilities, as well as specialty buildings such as bus stops, smoke shacks, doggie dorms, churches, and so much more,” says Michelle Wickum, the director of marketing for SteelMaster. “Regardless of what purpose our buildings and roofing systems serve, each and every one provides security and durability against fire, snow, and hurricane-force winds, as was the case with the shed that Mr. Brown and his family sought shelter in.”

SteelMaster’s pre-fabricated metal buildings are designed for a broad range of residential, commercial, and government/military applications including garages, workshops, carports, agricultural storage, metal barns, Quonsets, airplane hangars, RV storage, roofing systems, storage buildings, military buildings, government buildings (GSA), commercial warehousing, metal sheds, industrial storage, and are also commonly used for private, personal, government, and military housing and shelters.

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