http://ozarkspub.vo.llnwd.net/o37/KSMU/audio/mp3/ozark-school-district-plan-seeks-add-multiple-safe-rooms_79128.mp3
Amid Severe Weather Awareness Week, yearly preparations are again underway to properly warn and protect citizens. And as KSMU’s Julie Greene reports, local school districts are continuing plans to construct safe rooms as a means for protection.
One of the latest examples is the Ozark School District, which has recently incorporated safe rooms, also known as storm shelters, into its facility strategic plan approved by the school’s Board of Education.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, recommends areas at a high-risk for tornadoes have a storm shelter in which community members can protect themselves from dangerous weather.
Ozark School District Superintendent Kevin Patterson says among the school’s top priorities is safety and security.
“We’ve been improving with security instances over the last several years with the shooting in Connecticut, but what we haven’t been able to do is look at our storm shelter improvement. There’s very little you can do if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, so this is just an opportunity to utilize the construction that we have to hopefully protect our kids because that's why we're here,” Patterson said.
The facility strategic plan, which is to guide the district for the next 30 years, includes constructing a FEMA-grade safe room that would connect the junior high’s main building with the west building and adding FEMA-grade shelter pods to all four elementary schools. Shelters will also double as classrooms, cafeterias, libraries or other educational facilities.
“That really leaves our upper elementary and our high school and we’re looking for solutions there of what we can do to make areas within those facilities storm shelters, so what we’d like to do is to be able to do something in all of our buildings,” Patterson said.
Each shelter would hold the population of that school. Estimated costs have yet to be determined, but officials hope to fund the additions with bonds and FEMA grants, like that of the Joplin School District.
Related: See our report on safe rooms following last year’s tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.
By this fall, Joplin will have 14 community safe rooms at every elementary school, at its high school and its football stadium. Each community safe room will also serve as a gymnasium, and the football stadium’s community safe room will double as locker rooms and a field house. All public schools will also have safe rooms located inside that will serve only students and staff members.
Kelli Price is a spokesperson for the Joplin School District.
“After the devastation that we suffered her in Joplin in 2011, it’s important for us to know that we’re keeping our kids safe, especially if you saw the pictures of what our schools looked like after they were hit by a tornado. Also, the fact that these are community safe rooms: people living within the vicinity of our school also have a safe place now to go during bad weather,” Price said.
Community safe rooms will open automatically by remote control so community members will be able to access the building where managers will be onsite to assist them. Each community safe room is designed to serve the 900-1500 people who live within a five minute walking distant of the shelter.
For KSMU News, I’m Julie Greene.