As tornado season ramps up, more people are turning to private home s…

When a powerful EF-4 tornado ripped through Greenfield, Iowa, last week TJ Oder, the chief of the town’s volunteer fire department, said his house took a direct hit. Still, his family was saved by a private tornado shelter he had installed when he built his residence in 2014.

Oder said that when the twister struck, he was helping to prepare a triage center to treat injured neighbors and get them to hospitals while his family members were hunkered down in his personal shelter.

“My grandmother, my girlfriend and her son, and all my animals were in it, and they all survived when it directly hit my house,” Oder told ABC News.

At least four people were killed and 35 were injured in the Greenfield twister, but throughout the area, many lives were saved due to people being close to a public shelter as the twister bore down or having one like Oder just steps away in their own home, officials said.