When the call came that a tornado was headed for her town on May 4, 2003, Julie Johnson of Pierce City, Mo., heeded the warning and went for cover at the National Guard Armory.

“People were standing around and looking out and the next thing you hear is someone saying, ‘Oh my God, there it is! There it is!’” said Johnson.

“Everybody waited until the last minute to go downstairs,” she said. “It was a bottleneck and people were stuck.”

Unable to make it into the basement, Johnson dove into a restroom until the tornado passed.

“We opened the door of the bathroom and the roof is gone; things are hanging down, the smell of natural gas was horrible,” said Johnson.

On the afternoon when a tornado destroyed Pierce City's business district, 10 people were hurt and one died at the armory. This happened at a place where people thought they were safe. The National Guard Armory was, after all, Pierce City's designated tornado shelter.

“That armory was always there; we thought we had the spot,” said Mayor Carol Hirsch.

Other communities also think they have a safe shelter. On the night of Jan. 7, thousands packed into area storm shelters looking for safety. The shelters include schools, city buildings and churches; all are available to residents when a tornado is on the way.

KY3 News investigated nearly four dozen public storm shelters in 20 communities -- and found many provide false senses of security.

“Understand, you may not be as safe as you think you might be,” said Bob Franke, an engineer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Yet many people leave their homes, go out in the weather to get to a public shelter. Franke says many city leaders don't realize their public service could be a disservice.

“Moving them from house to shelter could be putting them in more harm’s way,” he said.

FEMA does provide specific design and construction criteria for building a safe community shelter. A shelter that meets that criteria can withstand winds up to 250 miles per hour, compared to 90 miles per hour for a typical building. Those who use the shelter should be able to get there in about five minutes. And it should be big enough to hold those people.

Of the 41 public shelters that were checked, KY3 News could confirm that only seven meet FEMA criteria. What's more, few of the shelter owners seem willing to look into the safety of their own facilities.

FEMA provides a free wind hazard checklist online. A scoring system helps assess a building's susceptibility to tornado damage. We asked the owners of every community storm shelter to fill one out but only seven agreed to do so.

“Without evaluation, I don't think anyone can say it's safer than your home,” said Franke.

Community storm shelters aren't the only false senses of security. The place in a home that many think is safest in a tornado might not be.

“In the Midwest, we think we go to basement and we'll be safe and that's not true,”

Yes, even underground might not be the best place to go.

“Houses shift on their foundation and will collapse into their basements,” said Franke.

It's a scary reality for Pierce City School District Superintendent Russ Moreland. The district used to send kids to the basement of the 100-year-old elementary school.

“Everything in that building could come down on top of them,” said Moreland.

In the tornado outbreak on the night of Jan. 7-8, the principal of another school in the Ozarks stood in her damaged building and worried about the spot that her students would have gone for safety.

“If God blessed us last night, it was that we didn't have kids, because glass would be all over kids in that hall because we would have had them in the hall, thinking it was a safe place,” said Republic Elementary 3 Principal Cyntha Crabtree, talking about damage to her school.

It's why the Pierce City School District applied for federal money - and got it - to build a public shelter that meets FEMA criteria.

“Almost the whole city could fit in here,” Hirsch said. “This is a true storm shelter.”

The City of Pierce City did the same in hopes of providing a safe place where every resident can ride out the next storm.

“We felt like we had to; everyone looks to the city in times of emergency,” said Hirsch.

Pierce City Mayor Carol Hirsch enters the city's new storm shelter, which meets FEMA guidelines for community shelters.