By Mary Stone

A local company is thinking big, as it regroups this year to raise capital to do more than just business—to save lives.

Zagorski Forms Specialists Inc., or as it is more commonly known—OZ SAFEROOMS—specializes in making 40,000 pound seamless concrete shelters to protect people from tornadoes.

The family-run company began making it’s indestructible joint-free cement shelters in 1999 after the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched a nationwide search for a structure capable of surviving F5 tornadoes, a severe type of tornado.

The company’s founder & CEO Andrew Zagorski, 54, a cement form specialist who has worked on projects that include the Rochester sewer tunnel and concrete tunnels under Niagara Falls, came out of retirement to build a shelter prototype.

After performing tests on Zagorski’s single-pour structure, FEMA approved the shelter for use.

The shelters have undergone a series of 500-600 pound drop tests, including one administered by Rochester Institute of Technology in which a car was repeatedly dropped onto the 25-square-foot prototype.

“They measured the impact of dropping materials like sandbags and cars on the saferooms,” says Joseph Grzywna, “It’s pretty phenomenal.”

But the ultimate test occurred in 2003, when Oklahoma-resident Donald Staley survived an F5 tornado with winds estimated at 265 miles per hour. Staley survived the disaster by sitting it out in his OZ SAFEROOM shelter, as a church was leveled next door to what was once Staley’s house.

Staley bought his saferoom after is house was caught in the path of the last F5 to hit his town in 1999.

He since has gone on to become an Oklahoma-based sales representative for OZ SAFEROOMS.

As a part of a pilot program in which Zagorski Forms produced and sold 38 saferooms at roughly $7,500 a unit, the company was one of the first to qualify for project impact loans, as a result of which consumers can now access government-financed, low interest loans to purchase OZ SAFEROOMS shelters.

Located at High Technology of Rochester Inc.’s Henrietta-based business incubator, OZ SAFEROOMS has sold roughly 68 units so far, three of which have withstood tornadoes without so much as a dent.

Since introducing the shelters, the company has worked to produce handicapped –accessible shelters and has received attention nationwide.

.”We didn’t realize how many handi-capped people were in Oklahoma, and then we went to Florida, because of the hurricanes,” Zagorski says. “So there’s a huge market there (in) Texas.”

Due to success in 2003, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry made a public announcement to urge citizens to invest in an OZ SAFEROOMS shelter; since orders have grown in Oklahoma and across the country.

Zagorski Forms, which has patented the monolithic pouring technology that produces it’s seamless structures, can make 200 saferooms a year but plans to increase that number to 1,000. The company declined to disclose revenues.

In addition to that goal, Zagorski Forms has plans to expand operations and produce larger saferooms for community shelters and 911 centers. To reach those targets and meat increase demand, the company has regrouped to focus its efforts on attracting some $4 million in investment.

”The government is pushing us to get this project started at a bigger level,” Zagorski says.

But he says that is not the only reason. After the tornado devastation he has witnessed, Zagorski says he is intent on saving as many lives as he can, and the best way to do that, he says, is to produce as many saferooms as he can.