If you had to take shelter from a tornado at your place of employment, would you feel secure?

If you’re one of the 1,100 employees working at Steelcase in Athens, the answer would likely be a resounding “yes.”

The company is in the process of completing two separate tornado shelters at its Athens site that can comfortably accommodate up to 600 employees in each structure. The state-of-the-art shelters were built at a cost of $1.8 million and are rated to withstand wind speeds of up to 250 mph, which equates to an EF5-rated tornado.

Athens Plant Manager John Lucius said the decision to build the shelters was made after tornado events in recent years that claimed lives and damaged hundreds of homes in Limestone County. A few employees were impacted by the April 27, 2011, outbreak, but even more were affected by the April 28, 2014, tornado that hit the Clements and Coxey communities.

Lucius added that even though the company’s global headquarters is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the company realized Athens is in a “high-risk” area for tornadoes.

“(Company officials) value employees and they’re the core of the company,” Lucius said. “Knowing the danger that existed, they wanted to make this investment.”

The shelters are both located on the north side of the Athens plant, which is located at 214 Durham Drive. They were constructed with cinder blocks that have been filled with concrete and steel reinforcement. The footings for the walls are also 4 feet below the ground.

Both shelters can be accessed from inside the building. There’s enough room inside so that if filled to capacity, each employee would still have five square feet of space to himself or herself.

When designing the shelters, Lucius said future growth was considered as was a worst-case scenario — a reported tornado during an overlap between the end of the first shift and beginning of the second shift.

Employees will be ordered to the shelters when a tornado warning is issued for Limestone County, though Lucius said the plant’s safety managers will also take the storm’s proximity to the plant into consideration. Employees have already participated in drills, during which Lucius said employees made it to the shelters in less than seven minutes.

“If we had an actual warning, I believe we would move much quicker,” he said. “We have an alarm in the building that sounds like a tornado siren, and everyone knows the sound.”

The shelters are only for employees, however, and will not be open to the community in the event of a tornado. Lucius said several employees have asked if they could bring their families into the shelter during a warning.

“We’re telling them they need to have an emergency preparedness plan at home,” he said. “If we were at capacity, it would be a problem (to accommodate non-employees).”

The first shelter is complete, while the other should be done in two to three weeks. Lucius was hopeful both would be done by the Thursday ribbon-cutting, but a wet winter season delayed construction.

The shelters will have break room tables for employees, restrooms and a cable television so employees can monitor the storm’s path while in the shelter.

“We’ve painted the walls and we’re going to make it really comfortable,” Lucius said. “The employees are really appreciative and impressed with (the shelters). They appreciate the company spending corporate funds to build them.”