Oklahoma Inventors Create Innovative 'Tornado Lifejacket'

[Matt Tottle]

A powerful tornado is bearing down on the school your kid is attending. Which option would you prefer? Kid jumps into an admittedly ghetto underground metal box, or hunkers in the hallway and hopes for the best?

I don't understand your polarized, all-or-nothing thinking. Is a shelter only 'useful' if it's built like a missile silo and equipped with at least one espresso machine for each handicapped kid? (The 'California Standard.') Given the statistically low threat, perhaps a 'redneck' solution is entirely appropriate? "Accessibility Standards?" Screw that. Build a small safe room for the handful of disabled folks, and let the rest walk to safety in the Redneck Bunker.

You are so far out of touch with reality it's almost laughable. What part of YOU CAN NOT HILLBILLY ENGINEER A SHELTER FOR A PUBLIC BUILDING WITH PUBLIC FUNDS do you not understand? Anything to do with life safety in public places of accommodation MUST pass codes. Period. It's non-negotiable, end of story.

Mythbusters did a "one person tornado shield" a while ago (with Reed and Sean)

Yeah, except it was made of Kevlar and steel (some assembly required), it was heavy, and it spiked into the ground to prevent you from being pushed around. Jamie is 200lbs, and the pod was probably about 50.. And I'd bet anything it didn't cost $3,000 - or even $1,000 to make. This piece of crap is a pound of Kevlar and foam, and considering it is designed with 50lb kids in mind, it will do absolutely nothing to keep them from being blown down the hall - also since it is strapped to them, it will most likely act like a wing and lift them into the air and toss them somewhere. Sure as hell won't protect them from the flying vending machine Elaine mentioned.

I don't understand your polarized, all-or-nothing thinking. Is a shelter only 'useful' if it's built like a missile silo

"Storm shelter" does NOT necessarily equal "underground concrete bunker used only during tornado warnings." They can be used for other purposes and can also serve as community shelters.

Here's an example:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mo...ouri-schools-build-tornado-safe-rooms-n107486

"The two tornado-safe rooms in Nixa, at Mathews Elementary School and Inman Intermediate School, just look like, and operate as, regular gyms.

“That’s honestly what freaks people out the most,” said Rantz. “They walk in and they don’t feel protected. They think a tornado-safe room needs to be underground.”....

"(The school principal) said building safety rooms in schools provides “more bang for your buck” because they can double or triple as other usable spaces (one of the gyms also has a stage for smaller performances).

"But these new constructions aren’t cheap—Nixa’s cost between $735,000 and $2.6 million—a FEMA grant pays for 75 percent of the price. Nixa paid the rest by selling bonds; in other area school districts, they’ve covered the cost by raising property taxes."

Note the last two sentences: there's also more than one way to fund construction of school shelters. FEMA grants can cover a good portion of the cost, and there are a variety of ways to fund the remaining cost. (If all else fails, a private fundraising drive might cover the last few thousand dollars or so.)

There are also ways to improve tornado safety in schools that don't cost ANY money:

"Nixa schools have also completely revamped their tornado drill procedures after examining surveillance footage from a Joplin high school during the 2011 twister. The standard procedure for years was duck-and-cover in the hall, but the footage showed a vending machine whipping through a hallway, which had become a wind tunnel. Luckily, no children were in its path—the twister hit on a Sunday.

“If there had been children in that school, it would have been absolutely devastating,” said Hawkins.

"The new drill procedure is to head straight for the FEMA safe rooms, or in schools that don’t have them yet, to take cover in interior classrooms or bathrooms (emphasis mine). Although there’s no state law mandating it, Nixa schools have decided to run these new drills four or five times during the school year."

I never said anything about them needing to be underground. That's part of Greg's delusion that there is any jurisdiction in this overly litigious country where it's acceptable to use hillbilly engineering for a shelter at a public building. I know it is the most cost effective to fortify certain areas and designate them as shelters. The best way is to fortify the corridors and put armored doors at each end. What I have a problem with is the current push to retrofit existing buildings against this statistically improbable event. The cost of adding retrofits to an existing, most likely obsolete building can be anywhere from a tenth to a third of of the cost of building a brand new, state-of-the-art structure with the fortifications engineered in. I would much rather see the funds go to putting in new buildings that better address the needs of the students and teachers, than to waste it on retrofitting the obsolete building - which would probably be totally demolished if something hit and would have to be rebuilt anyway. A brand new, properly engineered building would need some repairs (new roof, windows, etc), but most likely would not need to be rebuilt.

 

[Matt Tottle]

Sorry about the tiny text; when I previewed the post it was the same size text as the rest.
The questions were not directed specifically to you. I quoted your post because it mentioned the safe rooms also being used for gymnasiums and other purposes, which jogged my memory about the guide for SWEP.

That warning applies to non-fortified structures with expansive roofs. They tend to have tall, non-reinforced metal and block walls, large spans of relatively weak "open triangle" roofing truss, thin metal roofing sheet and windows. All they have to do is hold themselves up against normal wind forces. A gymnasium that is engineered to be a rated shelter would have no windows, steel-reinforced poured/formed concrete (not block) walls, closely spaced I-beam trusses, and plate steel roofing sheet.

But unless there's a sign on the door that says "Tornado Shelter", the gym would be last place I'd head in a school.

 

[Jeff Wright]

Here's an example:

"The two tornado-safe rooms in Nixa, at Mathews Elementary School and Inman Intermediate School, just look like, and operate as, regular gyms."

I think folks remember being told to stay away from gyms during tornado outbreaks for many years. It will take a lot to unlearn that behavior--same as with the famous overpass video.

In the 1998 Oak Grove-B'ham Night Tornado, some after hours kids did well to hide under heavy bleachers. The hallways, on the other hand, were filled with concrete blocks that would have broken the fingers of any kids there sheltering his head.

This is where those bedliner sprays could have helped, or an inflatable tube to keep the walls off the kids, as with the Enterprise Alabama tornado
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7474

The worst damage occurred at Enterprise High School, where eight students died after one hallway was almost completely destroyed. A quarter-mile (400 m) wide swath through the downtown area was devastated, with at least 370 houses damaged or destroyed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise,_Alabama

Were I a teacher and nothing else available during tornado days, I might have kids drag desks into the hallways and hide under those. The larger desks you can't lean back in? They have plenty of room under that expansive writing surface. The desks can help hold debris up as well if the are wedged together front to back across the hall--if you have time to brace them.

Contrary to folks who mock 1950s preparedness films--duck-and-cover works. The folks who went to the windows as the Russian meteor shockwave shoved the glass inside learned that the hardway.