DAILY Photo by Gary Cosby Jr The National Geographic Channel will feature these Safe-T-Shelter tornado shelters sold by Robert, left, and Brent Mitchell at their business.

Los Angeles TV crew filming Danville storm shelter company

By Ronnie Thomas
DAILY Staff Writer
rthomas@decaturdaily.com · 340-2438

DANVILLE — When non-fiction television producer Nicholas Stein of Los Angeles landed a project about natural disasters, he sought input from a Danville company that makes storm shelters.

He told Robert M. Mitchell that Actuality Productions, a division of Hearst Entertainment, will focus on the human, scientific and engineering aspects of disasters in a three-part series for the National Geographic Channel.

Stein said in the first hour, he will concentrate on the Palm Sunday tornadoes that ripped through Alabama and Georgia and devastated Goshen United Methodist Church. The March 27, 1994, tornado killed 20 and injured 90 at the church near Piedmont.

Stein is interested in featuring Applied Solar Technology Inc.'s storm shelters in a segment about the future of technology and tornadoes. He and a film crew will shoot in Piedmont on Tuesday and arrive in Danville on Wednesday morning.

"We'll meet at 7:30 and accompany them to a shelter installation at the Morgan County Agricultural Service Center on Alabama 36 in Hartselle," Mitchell said.

"I will encourage them to film at another of our sites in Douglas on their way out."

Two companies

Mitchell, who retired from the Navy in 1981, said he, his wife Doris and their son Brent own 76 percent of two companies that led them to manufacturing storm shelters in 1995 on Morgan County 55 West.

"Aqua Marine Enterprises Inc. is a research and development company," Robert Mitchell said. "When we develop a new product, we pass it on to Applied Solar Technology, our production company. Its primary product is the Safe-T-Shelter."

Robert Mitchell is president and chief executive officer of the parent company and president of Safe-T-Shelter. Brent Mitchell, who does the design work, is vice president and chief operating officer of Aqua Marine.

Tornado shelters

"We were seeking a new product line when Brent discovered that no one was producing tornado shelters," Robert Mitchell said.

"Brent went over to Arkansas and bought an old fiberglass mold. We started our development from that."

After four years of producing fiberglass shelters, AST introduced a patented, high-density polyethylene, rotomolded shelter in 2000, designed and engineered for high production serving a national market.

The company then moved on to safe rooms and to large community shelters.

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