MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And we're joined now by one of those people right now. Jerry Wayne Moore spent more than six hours in his unconventional storm shelter. He joins us now from Ohatchee, Alabama. Welcome to the program.
JERRY MOORE: Thank you.
NORRIS: Now, tell me about that storm back on April 27th. How bad was it, and how many of you headed to that school bus for safety?
MOORE: There was 14 of us. There was my kids and my wife, and we even had a Great Dane in there with us.
NORRIS: A Great Dane, those are big dogs.
MOORE: Yes, yes, my son's got one.
NORRIS: What happened when you came out? What did you see?
MOORE: It's just something that you don't believe, you know. It just looked like everything was gone, and finally we looked around, we realized what had happened.
NORRIS: And what happened? How were your homes? Did they survive this?
MOORE: Oh, my house made it. It was tore up pretty bad, but my daughters, both of their trailers was destroyed.
NORRIS: Both of their trailers were destroyed, you said.
MOORE: Yes, ma'am. It took both of them. One tree went across one of them. Then it took one, just tore it all apart.
NORRIS: But you all were safe inside that bus. You could hear the storm roaring outside.
MOORE: Oh, yeah.
NORRIS: Help us imagine what this looks like, this school bus that looks like you drove it straight into the side of a hill.
MOORE: It was just an idea I got out of that, them storms in '94 when they come through and took all the churches and all out. I know then we had to have something to get in.
NORRIS: But why did you decide to reach for a school bus as a shelter? What made you think of using a school bus?
MOORE: Well, my wife got married at a church, and a preacher had it, and it wasn't no good. And he said we could have it if we wanted it, and I got the idea of just putting it inside the hill.
NORRIS: How'd you get it into the side of the hill because a bus is pretty big? You had to dig a big hole to get it in there.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MOORE: I hired a backhoe to come up here and dig the hole out and put it in there, and then we covered it back up.
NORRIS: What's it look like on the inside? Take me inside?
MOORE: They sold us some seats made onto the floor that just, you just sit down on, or you can lay down. The kids mainly just wanted to lay down around in there.
NORRIS: I read that there was someone else who lives near you who couldn't get his hands on a school bus, and so he put a van in the side of a hill.
MOORE: Oh, that's my brother Larry. He got a van from somebody he knows and put it inside of his hill up there.
NORRIS: They rode out the same storm inside that van.
MOORE: Yes, ma'am.
NORRIS: Is there anything that you plan to do with the shelter now that you know it's durable, and it's tough and that it's a safe place to ride out a storm? You plan to renovate or upgrade it in any way?
MOORE: Well, believe me, I think I'm going to put a little bit more dirt on top of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
NORRIS: Well, Jerry Wayne Moore, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. All the best to you and your family.
MOORE: Thank you.
NORRIS: You take care.
MOORE: You, too.
NORRIS: That's Jerry Wayne Moore of Ohatchee, Alabama, telling us about his unusual storm shelter: a school bus partially buried in the side of a hill. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.