Tornado Shelters at the schools aren't practical.

[Broomstick]

@ducati

I can’t imagine why anyone would build a building with a likelihood of getting hit by a tornado or two in the next, oh, 30 or 40 years, and not incorporate SOME feature to allow occupants some measure of protection. You don’t have to build an entire school out of Impenetrable Fortress Material, but you can certainly build the main hallway or core area to withstand an F-5 at a small premium.

You misunderstand the odds.

Well, yes, Moore did get hit twice with an EF5 in 14 years, but the over the entire Tornado Alley area it is NOT likely that any particular area will get hit with with an EF4 or EF5 tornado in even a century, much less 30 or 40 years. The odds are any given building will NOT get hit with a tornado at all, and if it does, it will be a lesser one, an EF0 to EF3, for which ducking into a well-built hallway should be adequate for shelter.

The problem is that these monsters are horrific and very, very well publicized, leading people to think they’re more common or more likely than they actually are.

[StGermain]

I’d think school auditoriums could be basement-like storm structures. They’re meant to house a large number of people in comfort. They could be made to have access points from different quadrants of the school and maybe have an exterior access point, too.

StG

[Skywatcher]

@StGermain

I’d think school auditoriums could be basement-like storm structures. They’re meant to house a large number of people in comfort. They could be made to have access points from different quadrants of the school and maybe have an exterior access point, too.

I’ve been in an old elementary school which had a fallout shelter designed into the gym.

[XT]

Just a drive by, but CNN has an article on this subject that might be interesting to some, as it talks about why folks don’t build shelters, and what can be done.

CNN) – It’s one of the most familiar pieces of advice from authorities to people in the path of a tornado: Get into your basement. Yet few homes in the Oklahoma City area have them – even though that state is hit by far more powerful tornadoes than most others.

“Probably less than one tenth of one percent” of the houses in Moore are built with basements, said Mike Hancock, president of Basement Contractors in Edmond, Oklahoma. “There’s just such a misconception that you cannot do it.”

Why?

Hancock cited the area’s high groundwater levels and heavy clay as among the reasons some people believe – wrongly, he said – that basements are tough to construct.

But improved waterproofing methods can obviate the first; and the second, too, is surmountable, according to Hancock, who said he has built more than 600 basements in the Oklahoma City area over the past 15 years.

“We do 'em all day long,” he said. “I’ve got 32 basements to put in the ground right now.”

The city of Moore was the epicenter of an EF5 tornado Monday that decimated neighborhoods in the Oklahoma City area, leaving at least 24 dead.

Inside a tornado-ravaged school

In Moore, other issues can dissuade new home buyers from investing in basements, Hancock said. One is that there are so few other such houses that comparable values are tough to estimate, “so appraisers don’t give you any credit.”

In fact, basements are so rare in the area that real estate listings do not include “basement” as an option under foundation types, he said.

“You can list it in the comments section, but that’s not a foundation type.” That means it’s hard for house hunters to narrow their searches to houses with basements, which makes it harder still for sellers who have built houses with basements to recoup their investments, he said.

[artemis]

Interesting article, XT. Thanks for posting it! It sounds like the original anti-basement sentiment was well-founded, but local attitudes haven’t kept up with improvements in construction techniques. Perhaps as competent builders install more basements in the area and homeowners get more used to the idea that buying a basement doesn’t mean buying into serious foundation issues 10 years down the road if it’s constructed right, basements will become more common.

Of course, a house without a basement can still have an easily-accessed below-grade shelter installed (either in the yard or in the garage) and they offer more protection than an ordinary basement anyway, so perhaps promoting those will be the more successful approach for improving Oklahomans’ future saftey.

I’m considering getting on of those below-ground garage models installed in my house, but I want to learn more about them first - specifically, will frost heaving be an issue, and how do you replace the unit when it finally wears out, given that it’s cemented in place. So I understand the reluctance of those Oklahomans: foundation issues are far worse than any of the potential issues that are giving me qualms! Who wants to inadvertently seriously damage the resale value of single most valuable thing most of us own?

[Pixel_Dent]

@Broomstick

The odds are any given building will NOT get hit with a tornado at all, and if it does, it will be a lesser one, an EF0 to EF3, for which ducking into a well-built hallway should be adequate for shelter.

I live in an area that gets a tornado every couple of years and after the last one a neighbor was considering moving to a nearby house because it had a basement where he could shelter from tornadoes. I plugged the numbers into my analytics program and discovered that statistically he was far more likely to die falling down the basement stairs than he was to die in a tornado.

[artemis]

@Pixel_Dent

I live in an area that gets a tornado every couple of years and after the last one a neighbor was considering moving to a nearby house because it had a basement where he could shelter from tornadoes. I plugged the numbers into my analytics program and discovered that statistically he was far more likely to die falling down the basement stairs than he was to die in a tornado.

That’s the thing I think some of the commentators I’ve been reading on other websites don’t get: an EF5 tornado is a black swan event. It’s devastating if you’re hit by one - but the odds are that even if you live on the Great Plains all your life you’ll never experience even one tornado, much less an EF5. So how much should we spend to prepare for rare-but-devastating events? What’s the point which best balances the opposing concerns of cost and safety? And since everyone has differing levels of tolerance for risk, reaching a consensus of what ought to be legally required and what ought to be optional isn’t easy.

[Ionizer]

I live in a small town where the storm formed/passed over, and there were actually four smallish funnels touching down off/on for a short while just east of me (maybe 2-3 miles or so). I did not see the funnels, but the clouds over me where SCARY, and if my video were less fuzzy I’d link it (sorry). I’ve seen my share of funnels, one of them from atop Mt Scott by Fort Sill back in mid-80’s - VERY neat. I’ve been lucky in having been missed by funnels like 4-5 times, usually by just a few miles at most. A friend I worked with lost two homes in Moore, one of them recently just-built before funnel wiped it clean, then moved to Ada and had to flee from yet another within a few years. Its how it goes here at times :eek:
Regarding the elementary school here - as soon as it looked like weather was going bad, the Fire Chief cancelled end-of-school field-day and made kids get inside school by noon. Parents were being called to pick up kids and/or sending kids home if in walking distance (no buses in town). By about two o’clock, there was hail falling and all kinds of twisting clouds overhead. I have a cockatoo that was going NUTS just from the sounds of the storm, LOL. Parents of school-kids here know what to expect whenever the shit is going to be flung.

The kids/adults at school were sheltered in halls and wherever possible, or so I was told. We lost power for a couple hours, so went driving out by where funnels were and found two separate tracks of trees ripped over and debarked, etc - many, many small ‘lake houses’ were missed by just a wee bit, including a relative’s who just moved out there a few weeks ago.

Listening to car radio as I was outside watching the clouds still passing (and another cell forming over us, too!) I heard the narrative of Moore getting leveled yet again and I could not help but start weeping a bit. I feared for the possibility of kids/hospitals as I heard the direction it was going - and yeah, it took a bad path.

The number of times that folks here have to watch radar and get ready for shelter is more than most would imagine. You get to know the weathermen really well since you watch them ALL day for weeks sometimes. Schools would never be able to carry on if they went and hid EVERY time a cell passed over or nearby. IMHO, its just random chance when the funnel is going to reach down and touch you. You just do what you can when you can. Even with four funnels spotted so near me, I never thought of getting into the abandoned-but-still-there storm cellar in empty lot across street from me. We were all ready to sprint there, though. LOTS of neighbors were in yards/street with bent necks watching for signs of the cloudy fingers-of-doom dropping to Earth (funnels, per se).

The four funnels that were by me never made the news since Moore kind of took precedence, but storm chasers were overheard on radio clearly following them, etc. This was a lot more storm that most people realize since news did not cover ALL of what happened, just the worst stuff - but it was all bad, trust me. Most of us could feel it in the air as storm formed up. And the schools were reacting positively, for sure! :):)

[artemis]

Sounds terrifying, Ionizer! Glad to hear you’re safe.

And yes, those of us who live where the twisters like to dance are more weather-wise than many seem to realize. You can usually feel when a bad storm’s building. And now with Doppler radars everywhere and NOAA programmable weather radios being so affordable, people usually have a reasonable amount of warning that Big Trouble is coming their way and time to get to saftey. If those OK tornadoes had hit any time prior to 1950, hundreds would be dead instead of two dozen. We HAVE made progress!

[bump]

@Lord_Feldon

The sirens don’t help here. They’re pretty useless. They’re sounded countywide when even a couple of square miles in the corner are clipped by a warning. I was once 18 miles from the warning boundary and my siren still blared. There weren’t even any sirens near that storm.
.

This is a pretty serious issue here too; I’ve lived in the D/FW area for 14 years, and I’ve heard the tornado sirens go off multiple times wherever I was, and not in a single case was there ever a tornado within 10 miles of me. I wasn’t going to go huddle in my hallway when the news showed that where I lived wasn’t even going to get rained on by that particular storm.

I’m not so much arguing against the utility of sirens, but rather that they need to upgrade the siren network and only set off the ones where the people need to actually pay heed and take cover. Setting them off over a broad geographical area just encourages complacency and ignorance (ignoring?) of the sirens, which we can all agree is bad.

I’d think they could easily enough network the sirens via phone lines or something, and basically set them off in the right pattern for potential or actual tornadoes, and not spook the rest of us who aren’t anywhere near them.

[artemis]

@bump

I’d think they could easily enough network the sirens via phone lines or something, and basically set them off in the right pattern for potential or actual tornadoes, and not spook the rest of us who aren’t anywhere near them.

I agree with this. And now that so many folks are walking around with GPS-enabled smart phones, perhaps NOAA can also work out a way to send an emergency text message alert to phones within the relevant area as well.

[Balance]

@artemis

I agree with this. And now that so many folks are walking around with GPS-enabled smart phones, perhaps NOAA can also work out a way to send an emergency text message alert to phones within the relevant area as well.

For what it’s worth, I work in the cell phone business, and we’ve been talking about public safety measures in my department lately (even before the storms). This particular item hasn’t come up, but I will make sure to mention it.

[XT]

@Balance

For what it’s worth, I work in the cell phone business, and we’ve been talking about public safety measures in my department lately (even before the storms). This particular item hasn’t come up, but I will make sure to mention it.

We use the Code Red service here, and a reverse 9/11 message system. The public can basically sign up, and it will send alerts and such to cell phones and the like.

[dzeiger]

@artemis

I agree with this. And now that so many folks are walking around with GPS-enabled smart phones, perhaps NOAA can also work out a way to send an emergency text message alert to phones within the relevant area as well.

Well, I hope they could do something better than what they are doing with the Amber Alert stuff where it seems like everyone within a hundred miles gets the alert.

But while the phone itself may know where it is via GPS tracking, it’s not necessarily going to be constantly updating anything that precise back to the network on a regular basis–I don’t think I necessarily need a tin-foil hat to want that sort of precision outside of government hands as much as possible.

On the other hand, I would think it might be at least feasible to blast a warning text to any cell phone attached to a particular set of towers–that’s probably more than sufficient precision for these type of events.

[Balance]

@dzeiger

On the other hand, I would think it might be at least feasible to blast a warning text to any cell phone attached to a particular set of towers–that’s probably more than sufficient precision for these type of events.

That was my first thought on an implementation, too. Even now, not every phone provides GPS data, but we do have a pretty good idea of the area a given cell covers.

[artemis]

@dzeiger

Well, I hope they could do something better than what they are doing with the Amber Alert stuff where it seems like everyone within a hundred miles gets the alert.

I agree - the alert should only go out to phones that are very close to the mesocyclone or people will learn to ignore it.

One of the things I love about my programmable weather radio is that you can not only program which county’s alerts you want to hear, you can program which specific types of alerts it makes an audible alarm for. So I never hear the Amber Alert crap, or the blizzard warnings, etc. Mine only goes off only for a severe thunderstorm warning or a tornado warning - the things I don’t mind being awakened for at 3 AM.

@dzeiger

On the other hand, I would think it might be at least feasible to blast a warning text to any cell phone attached to a particular set of towers–that’s probably more than sufficient precision for these type of events.

That would work just fine, I would think. And the nice thing about this sort of system is that not only does it not require the user to sign up for anything, it would also work when the person is traveling away from home. They’d automatically get the relevant tornado warning (and ONLY the relevant warning) wherever they happened to be in the US. There’s be no receiving a text message about a tornado in Kansas City while you’re visiting Chicago.

[johnpost]

get a weather radio (usa and canada) with SAME coding. then you will only get message for your county or part of county. also get a radio with a real loud alarm on it, one that can wake you from your sleep.

counties also might have a emergency alert phoning system. it will call phones in that county emergency messages in an area. they would likely be an opt out for this.

[Fubaya]

The National Weather Service does send alerts to cell phones over the Wireless Emergency Alert system, but it only works with newer phones and only with carriers that participate in the program.

I strongly disagree that we shouldn’t do anything. What we should do is up for debate. Older schools may not have many options but new school constructions do and they should use that opportunity to invest in a storm shelter or reinforced hallways etc.

But I do agree that the article is bad. It really doesn’t say anything. The URL is “critics-blast-oklahoma-school-safety-deadly-tornado” but it doesn’t really list a single criticism. The title is “Nowhere to go: Could a fallout shelter have prevented seven schoolchildren from dying in Oklahoma tornado?” but it doesn’t even address the question.

This does look like a criticism at first:

*"However, critics are also blasting the lack of warning time — around 15 minutes — between the first siren and the twister’s deadly path to the school.

Joe R. Eagleman, a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, told NBC News that the warnings could have been quicker for residents of Moore."*

Ok, first, 15 minutes is considered good lead time by meteorologists. They really want to get that number higher but with current technology fifteen minutes is pretty good. In weather circles, which are quick to criticize people over things like this, they’re congratulating the National Weather Service for the job they did with this tornado. I’d be surprised if anyone who knows anything on the subject is really criticizing the supposed lack of warning time.

Second, Eagleman didn’t say that at all. This article links to the article where he supposedly said it, but what he really said was that there probably wasn’t enough time to send kids home once the warning came out.

He goes on to say that kids are probably safer at home. This is being debated in weather circles. Is it better to send kids home or keep them at school? A large concentration of kids is a risk, but sending them home to trailers or homes on slabs isn’t any safer. And it’s not like these kids live 50 miles from school where they would have been safe, they lived in the neighborhood that this tornado took out and many of their homes were probably hit as well. It’s quite possible that more children would have died if they were sent home.

[johnpost]

yeah 15 minutes is a good warning time. tornadoes can form from a potential situation in a minute. a decade ago the warning time was six minutes.

i think an issue was preventing children from being out in buses. vehicles were being thrown on top of buildings and other vehicles. sheltering in any building is better than a vehicle.

[Fubaya]

The only thing they might have done is cancelled school early. The day started off with a possibility of tornadoes and by noon they seemed imminent. But there’s a dilemma, tornadoes were imminent for half of Oklahoma, there is no way to predict the city or even county where they will hit. Do half the schools in the state close? It doesn’t seem practical.

Whatever a school does decide, if they close, they should keep the school open for any kids that don’t have a good shelter. They shouldn’t kick out a kid who lives in a trailer. And if they do stay open, they should excuse any child whose parent picks them up on a high threat day. And they should communicate the options to the parents so they know they can get their kids if they don’t think they’re safe, or they can leave them there if that is safer than home.