No structure in the path of Monday’s mile-wide tornado in Moore, Okla., was left standing. TO WITHSTAND a direct hit from the F5 tornado, adequate shelter would qualify as below ground. Engineers say safe rooms with reinforced concrete walls would have played a “mitigating factor” in the amount of destruction and possibly saving of lives. It’s estimated 100 schools in Oklahoma have the safe rooms. They don’t come cheap — an average $600,000 to $1 million to do the job right. SO YES, start the talk. And at the very least require new construction of schools to adequately protect their children.
To a one, every home, commercial and public building, was wrested from its mooring and flattened.
Where the Plaza Towers Elementary School once stood is now “sticks and bricks,” according to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin. “No school. Just debris.” Seven of its students were found dead, buried beneath mountains of rubble.
Once able to emerge from the shock, people are beginning to take stock of Moore, a bustling city of 55,000, just south of Oklahoma City.
It’s not the first time disaster has visited. In 1999, another twister wreaked havoc, killing 41.
Immediately, city officials applied for $12 million in state and federal grants to subsidize the construction of safe rooms in public buildings. The demolished Kelly Elementary School was rebuilt with a metal safe room. But once the designated money was used up and life got back to normal, the sense of emergency quickly faded.
Today only 10 percent of the homes in Moore have an underground cellar, basement or safe room of some sort.
Plaza Towers, circa 1966, wasn’t required by law to have an underground shelter or safe room and had no protection to offer other than its old, brick walls.
That the town sports a $5 million football stadium but lacks any public shelter rankles not a few of its residents, especially now.
For homes in tornado-prone areas it’s recommended they have basements or a storm shelter of some sort and their foundations be bolted down with metal plates instead of nails.
Trouble is, a basement adds considerably to the cost of a home’s construction while its assessed value is only half that of above ground square footage.
Pre-fabricated shelters, such as those made by Iola’s D of K Vaults, cost in the neighborhood of $3,000 and fit nicely in a side or back yard.
Oklahoma State Rep. Mark McBride, who represents the Moore area, said Monday’s tornado should restart a discussion on whether public buildings should be required to have storm shelters.
It’s a good bet the families of the seven children who died in the Plaza Tower wish the discussion would have begun in earnest years ago.
Disasters can strike once, twice, three times over in the very same place.
— Susan Lynn
