The Columbiana City Council recently approved a grant application for a community emergency shelter through the Federal Emergency Management Association Hazard Mitigation Program.

The council unanimously approved the application for about a $100,000 grant funded project with a 25 percent or $25,000 (in kind services) match at its June 6 regular meeting.

Councilmember Tim Billingsley said, &8220;What we don&8217;t have right now are places for people who live in mobile homes to go in town (during a storm).

He said currently people come to city hall, which he said is not a shelter. And he said getting to lowest floor in a building is a place of safety, but not a shelter.

He said if the grant is approved, a community shelter would be located on city property behind city hall that could hold up to 100 people.

Billingsley said the building would be of a pre-manufactured type with earthen berms around it. The public would be able to enter, he said, on the ground level.

Billingsley said the city has also applied for a grant to add weather sirens on Egg & Butter Road and Buie Road