Most products exist because someone saw a market opportunity. This veteran-owned tornado shelter cover exists because a Navy veteran lifted a shelter lid in Memphis, Tennessee—and couldn’t un-see what was inside.
That moment didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was the product of decades of storm seasons, military moves, hard lessons, and a stubborn refusal to accept that a life-safety product should also be a source of dread.
This is the full story.
Growing Up in Tornado Alley
Joel Schuster grew up in Kansas—the kind of place where severe weather isn’t a seasonal inconvenience, it’s a way of life. Tornado sirens, local weathermen interrupting prime time, the specific green tint of a hail-producing sky—these were childhood constants.
The preparation was built in. Basement drills at home. Underground community shelters at school. A rotating awareness of siren tones and storm tracks. Severe weather literacy came with the territory.
What Joel didn’t know yet was how much of that literacy was geographic. The confidence that comes from growing up in a storm-ready community—knowing where the shelter is, knowing your neighbors are going to the same place, knowing exactly what to do when the sky changes—is specific to that place. It doesn’t travel.
The Military Education: What Moves Teach You
Joel’s Navy career required relocating approximately every two to three years. Each new duty station brought a new climate, new soil conditions, new building codes, and a new set of answers to the same basic question: Where do I go if a tornado comes?
The answer was different every time.
Some states had basements. Others didn’t—high water tables and clay soils made them impractical or impossible. Above-ground safe rooms appeared in some regions. Underground in-ground shelters showed up in others. FEMA-rated, ICC 500-certified, contractor-installed, DIY—the options varied as much as the geography.
Each move meant reacquiring a whole framework of storm preparedness from scratch: the local warning systems, the nearest shelter access, the severity of the regional storm season, the specific weather patterns of that latitude. It was a pattern Joel repeated enough times that he became something of an involuntary expert in how differently Americans approach tornado safety depending on where they live.
Oklahoma. The Real Tornado Alley.
The Navy eventually assigned Joel to Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, Oklahoma. He and his family purchased their first home in Norman—a house with no tornado shelter.
As a Kansan, Joel understood the Tornado Alley concept. Oklahoma had its own version—warm, moisture-laden Gulf air colliding with cold fronts sweeping down from the northwest, producing supercells capable of generating tornadoes that dwarf anything in the regional record books. Nothing in Kansas had prepared him for that.
He didn’t have to wait long to understand what that meant in practice.
On May 3rd, 1999, Joel was on duty at home in Norman when sirens began sounding across the metro. The storm track put Norman in the warning box. When he stepped outside and saw the green sky pushing past to the west—the telltale color of significant hail and violent up-and-down drafts—he knew it was serious.
It was the Bridge Creek–Moore tornado. An F5 on the original Fujita scale, later reclassified as the benchmark for the Enhanced Fujita scale. It holds the record for the highest measured wind speed ever recorded: 321 mph. It stayed on the ground for 37 miles, tracked through communities northwest of Norman, stripped homes and businesses off their foundations, and came within a few miles of Tinker AFB. More than 40 people died. Hundreds were injured.
For Joel, it was a turning point. Oklahoma was not just another duty station in a moderate storm corridor. It was the center of the storm universe—and the decision about what to do for shelter protection wasn’t hypothetical anymore.
The Decision: In-Garage, Underground
With a high probability of returning to Oklahoma after future reassignments, Joel made his choice: the in-garage underground shelter. He’d install one wherever he landed.
These shelters earn their reputation. Engineered steel or concrete boxes recessed into the concrete floor of a residential garage, rated to survive direct impacts from EF5-level debris fields. The exposed footprint is a two-piece metal lid—one fixed, one that slides or lifts open via piston-driven cylinders. The moveable section locks with a recessed handle and, depending on local code, sits flush with the garage floor or rises slightly above it.
When you’re underground with that lid closed and the storm passes overhead, the physics work in your favor. You’re below the debris field. The garage structure adds a layer of protection. The car parked above adds another. These shelters don’t encroach on living space, don’t reduce square footage, and add tangible value to the home.
Joel became a believer. He’d install in-garage underground shelters in two homes across two different states during his military career.
The Problem Nobody Warned Him About
The first installation happened in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. Joel was excited—this was real, engineered protection, and he’d arranged for an Oklahoma-based company to install it out of state because he trusted the product.
A few weeks after installation, he opened the lid.
What he found stopped him cold. Spiders. A small snake. A scorpion. Crickets. The remnants of other insects. And a dead mouse, in the early stages of decomposition.
The smell was immediate and significant. The air was stale. There were fluid stains on the carpet from decaying wildlife. The shelter—a piece of safety equipment his family was supposed to run toward in an emergency—had become something he had to psychologically prepare himself to enter.
From that point forward, Joel didn’t open the shelter lid without a vacuum and an extension hose in his hand. Not an exaggeration—that was his actual routine.
He tried DIY solutions. Various temporary fixes. At one point, a folded tarp—which, rather than solving the pest and debris problem, added a new one: trapped moisture, condensation, and humidity layered on top of the decaying matter already present. The tarp created conditions that weren’t just unpleasant. They were approaching biohazard territory.
His first workable attempt: a sheet of window screen material and a roll of double-sided magnetic tape, purchased from a hardware store. Not a bad concept. But any disturbance—cleaning, an accidental drive-over, an actual emergency use—broke the seal and required reinstallation. It wasn’t a solution. It was a recurring task.
Coming Full Circle: Oklahoma, Again
Ten years and multiple duty stations after Memphis, the military brought Joel back to Oklahoma. He installed another in-garage underground shelter. And, as expected, the familiar problems returned without being invited: pests, debris, moisture.
This time, though, something had changed. Joel was done managing the problem on a temporary basis. He had a concept, a set of failed prototypes, and enough frustration to turn a recurring nuisance into a full-time focus.
In 2020, he committed to building a permanent solution.
The requirements he’d developed over years of living with this problem became the product specification:
- Deployable by one person without help
- Rugged enough to support the weight of a car or lawn tractor parked over it
- Flexible enough to roll or fold for storage, but heavy enough to conform to uneven concrete surfaces
- Capable of sealing the perimeter well enough to block insects, spiders, snakes, rodents, frogs, and scorpions—without requiring adhesives or reinstallation after every use
- Breathable, not sealed—because sealing a below-grade concrete space traps moisture and accelerates the corrosion it’s supposed to prevent
- Fire-resistant materials throughout
- Cleanable with a vacuum or low-pressure rinse
- Built to last—one purchase, not a seasonal replacement
The breathability requirement wasn’t an afterthought. It was one of the hardest lessons from the tarp experiment. Sealing the opening doesn’t protect the shelter. It converts the shelter into a controlled humidity environment. Steel and concrete corrode. Carpet molds. Air quality degrades. The vinyl covers and tarps many shelter owners use are actively worsening the problem they’re meant to solve.
The cover Joel developed allows airflow while blocking physical intrusion. It’s the difference between a shelter that stays clean and a shelter that stays tolerable.
Veteran-Owned, Oklahoma-Made
Take Cover USA is a disabled veteran-owned small business. That designation isn’t a marketing angle—it’s a factual description of who built this product and why.
Joel’s Navy career gave him two things that shaped every decision in the product development process. The first is a thorough, firsthand understanding of how differently storm preparedness works across geographic regions—because he had to rebuild it from scratch a dozen times. The second is a particular intolerance for solutions that don’t actually solve the problem.
The in-garage underground shelter is, in his assessment, the best type of residential tornado shelter available. Cost-effective. Tested and accredited. Below grade and out of the direct debris field. Compatible with standard residential garages. He’s not trying to replace it.
He’s trying to make it usable—for the duration of a long-term ownership, not just the day it’s installed.
The result is the Take Cover storm shelter cover — designed to keep shelters clean, dry, and ready without the recurring maintenance battle.
When Joel does his own spot checks now, they’re genuinely just spot checks. The shelter is clean. The air circulates. The lid goes down clean and comes up clean. The years of dreading a routine inspection are gone.
That’s the product. That’s the story. For a closer look at how the cover was developed, see how we built it.
