Tag Archives: tornado shelter cost

Public Tornado Shelter/Safe Room Management-Part 3

So in Part One of this discussion, we’ve decided to open the shelter/safe room to the public, in Part 2, we have thought about WHEN the shelter/safe room should be open. In this Part, we are going to discuss WHO may show up at your public shelter/safe room.

With a FEMA funded shelter/safe room open to the public, FEMA states that an occupant should be within a ½ mile radius of the shelter/safe room with the thought that one can make the ½ mile trek within a 5 minute period. 5 minutes being the time from when the tornado warning has been given to the time that the shelter/safe room doors should be locked down. All of this is good and well, however, how does the shelter/safe room owner control the number of occupants that actually show up seeking shelter? Obviously, the shelter/safe room has been sized for a finite number of occupants which to some degree is not flexible. So what happens when twice the number of people show up at your shelter/safe room than it was designed? In smaller communities where one or multiple shelter/safe rooms strategically placed could easily support the entire community this may not be an issue but what about larger metro areas where just a few shelter/safe rooms will NOT support the entire community. There could easily be many more occupants showing up than the shelter would support because there is not an easy way to control this. The “Kid with the Golden Ticket” rule does not apply here. This could be easily be disastrous!

Imagine for a moment a community having one public shelter/safe room that is only big enough to support ¼ of the population of that community. This community is directly in the path of a major EF-5 tornado that is 10 minutes away. The community has been notified that this is a “tornado emergency” (as the National Weather Service did in Greensburg, Kansas) and the entire community should seek shelter IMMEDIATELY! Everyone in the community considers their options and 1/2 of the population runs to the ONE public shelter/safe room because it is by far the best protection in town. The shelter fills to capacity within 3 minutes and the doors are closed. What happens to the other ¼ of the population? Those that are beating on the door and pleading to let them in. Some of which may be children. Some of which may have been within the ½ mile radius boundary while others in the shelter/safe room may be outside the boundary. Those people that have exposed themselves to the storm to get to the shelter only to find it full and closed to them. Now they have to expose themselves again, with even less time before the tornado hits to seek shelter elsewhere. Can you imagine how awful that could be?

In recent years, there has been more and more pressure from the public to open tax payer funded community shelters/safe rooms, like schools for example, to the public because “they helped pay for it” so they should be able to use it. But if the shelter/safe room was designed only for the school occupants, what happens when the public shows up seeking shelter when it is full of students and staff? A solution could be to only make the shelter public when school is not in session. So now one has to have TWO different shelter/safe room management plans in place for this to succeed? Where having one successful management plan is scarce to begin with! And you know that even with the school in session rule, there are those that are going to ignore the rule.

Now I’m not saying opening a tax payer funded shelter safe/room to the public can’t happen, it just has to be thought out, documented, communicated, practiced, and executed well!!! Because if it is not, even with the best intentions, it could cost someone their life.

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelters in Corridors-not so good

Okay, I know what you are thinking … “When I was a kid we were told the corridor was the safest place to be in the event of a tornado”. I was told that very same thing when I was in school, all the kids were gathered up and sent into the corridors we lined up against the walls and sat cross-legged on the floor. Now that we know what we do today about shelter design is that a safe place to be? It certainly is not! Now it may be the least vulnerable place of refuge in a particular facility if no other interior window-less spaces are available, but still not a good place to find yourself in a tornadic event.

One of the toughest items of design in a shelter are the openings and what single space in a building has the most openings? Corridors! Every opening into the corridor from the spaces leading into it, are places for a potential breach in your “shelter”. The cost of a FEMA 361 or ICC-500 compliant door and hardware can run as much as 4 times the cost of a standard door and hardware adding substantial cost to the shelter as a whole. Corridors often have openings which go directly to the outside at either end, which brings us to another phenomenon that can happen in high wind events known as the “wind tunnel effect” which happens when there is a breach at the end of a corridor and wind is funneled thru a long small space. The speed of this air can actually increase and move faster that the air on the exterior of the building. Most tornados carry debris with the wind and that debris can find itself moving very swiftly through the corridor where the inhabitants are taking shelter.

Another problem with isolating a shelter to a corridor running thru the middle of a non-shelter building is the need to separate the structure in a way that the non-shelter can “blow away” without damaging the structural integrity of the shelter. Having a shelter within a non-shelter host building has many other challenges which is a completely different and hopefully future blog.

Designing a corridor as a tornado shelter can be done, but it may not be the most efficient use of shelter design and construction dollars. All tornado shelters and components of the shelter should be carefully designed and engineered to assure “near absolute” protection for the inhabitants of the shelter no matter where it’s located. Thanks for following, and remember. Ask questions, do your research, and make an informed decision. The lives of others may depend on it.

Post by Shauna Schultz, AIA

Tornado Shelter/Safe Room-Smoke and Mirrors

Isn’t it amazing when something that is very popular whether it be a type of sunglasses, boots, shoes, lawn chair, car or boat, there is always someone waiting in the wings to offer a cheap knock off or a “better mouse trap” that truly isn’t better albeit cheaper but definitely not equal or better quality. And guess what? It has hit the tornado shelter industry.

I’m always amazed at people’s creativity when it comes to designing tornado shelter/safe rooms. Sometimes they are really good ideas however, a lot of instances, the ideas are just ludicrous. There are a couple of instances where people that believe that designing and constructing a tornado shelter/safe room for our schools are saying that shelter just cost too much and there are some alternatives in the “mean time”. My experience in designing K-12 schools most of my career, is “mean time” or “temporary” actually means they are permanently temporary due to many factors beyond the scope of this blog.

Recently, I saw an internet news article where a school district was being provided with helmets for the students to help protect them in a tornadic event. These helmets were not what you would see an Indy or NASCAR driver wearing, more like what you would see during a visit to your local park.

Today, a friend and colleague of mine sent me an article about two individuals that have developed a blanket…yes…blanket to be utilized by school children to help protect them in a tornadic event at a cost of $1,000 each. They have been ballistic tested and passed those tests…

OK, hit “Pause” for a second..

There have been a lot of ballistic tested materials out there whether it be steel, glass, composite materials, meshes, etc. and have passed those tests. Bullets are a high velocity but low mass object so they dissipate energy very quick. That’s how bullet proof vests work and that’s great! However, put that same vest against a 15 pound 2×4 at 100 mph and the outcome will be different. The vest may keep the 2×4 from penetrating it but it doesn’t keep the force from being applied to it. That’s why you don’t see bullet proof vest advertised as a form of “personal tornado shelters”.

OK…hit “Play”

Someone missed that the kids that perished in Plaza Towers Elementary School, Moore, Oklahoma, per the medical examiner, were killed by “mechanical asphyxiation”…they were crushed by the building materials collapsing on them and could not breathe. No helmet, no blanket, no bullet proof vest would have stopped this from happening.

Cost savings? Let’s see, 600 occupants at $1,000 per blanket = $600,000 plus you need the space to store them! You’re ¾ the way to a full blown shelter that would give a school additional space!

The helmets and/or protective blanket concepts in schools, in my opinion do nothing but give parents a false sense of security however “temporary” they are. Whatever the motivation and intentions, these efforts are misdirected and in the end could easily cost someone their life.

Be careful out there!

Post by Corey Schultz, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Tornado Shelters – Are They Worth the Cost?

There is no doubt that a tornado shelter costs more than normal construction, both in design fees as well as the cost of the construction. Many say that tornadoes occur so infrequently they it is hard to justify the cost. Typically, those are people that have not been affected by one of the wind events, regardless of the intensity. There are eight sets of parents in Enterprise, Alabama, and seven sets in Moore, Oklahoma that lost children to one of the events while the kids were as school. Would they say that the cost of a tornado shelter would have been worth it? You bet they would and they have.

So let’s put the shelter cost into perspective. Currently, the FAA has established that when you step on an airplane, your life is worth $6.9 million. When we design a school shelter for 600 occupants, per the FAA, the total amount of lives would be worth $4.14 Billion (with a “B”). If this shelter has a premium cost of $500,000 – $1 million to protect $4.14 Billion, isn’t that a no brainer?

The need for tornado shelters is a proactive issue. If one waits to support the construction of a shelter until they are affected by an event,…..well, it’s too late just as it was too late for those 15 students in Enterprise and Moore. For some, the cost of a shelter is not worth it as long as it is affecting someone else. Forget what the FAA says, look at it this way; what is YOUR life worth? What is YOUR spouse’s or YOUR child’s life worth? Isn’t that a no brainer?