JOPLIN MISSOURI TORNADO SAFE ROOMS INSTALL

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. Students sit in the FEMA tornado shelter at the Inman Intermediate school during a tornado drill. “If there had been children in that school, it would have been absolutely devastating,” said Hawkins. Luckily, no children were in its path-the twister hit on a Sunday. 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. Nixa schools have also completely revamped their tornado drill procedures after examining surveillance footage from a Joplin high school during the 2011 twister. It takes taxpayers and school boards actively saying, ‘yes, we want this stuff.’”īut some changes spurred by Joplin don’t cost a thing. Phil Amtower, the emergency management director for Christian County, said “it really takes a whole community when you want to become disaster-resilient,” precisely because “taxes are involved. But the construction of safety rooms have been mostly embraced by southwest Missouri voters, regardless of where the revenue comes from.

In Oklahoma, there’s been fierce opposition to similar tax hikes, which has led lawmakers to push bond issues instead. Zac Rantz, the Nixa Public Schools Director of Communications, describes how the 'tornado resistant' doors of the FEMA tornado shelter at Helen Matthews Elementary School are different from normal commercial doors.

Nixa paid the rest by selling bonds in other area school districts, they’ve covered the cost by raising property taxes. 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. Rantz 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). This has happened a handful of times since the safe rooms opened in February 2013 one night attracted 80 people waiting out the watch. One night in late April, just before a tornado hit Arkansas, more than a dozen people showed up at Mathews Elementary with snacks, lawn chairs and basketballs-just in case it got bad. Each safe room can hold up to 1,200 people. Unlike some neighboring school districts, the FEMA gyms in Nixa open their doors to the public during tornado watches, transforming them into community centers for families, students, and the elderly. They think a tornado-safe room needs to be underground.”

“They walk in and they don’t feel protected. “That’s honestly what freaks people out the most,” said Rantz. The two tornado-safe rooms in Nixa, at Mathews Elementary School and Inman Intermediate School, just look like, and operate as, regular gyms. Other communities, including Joplin, have looked to Nixa for ideas.

JOPLIN MISSOURI TORNADO SAFE ROOMS INSTALL

There’s a new project underway to install all new tornado-safe external doors in the schools. Nixa was the first in the area to have shelters in schools-the first ones were operational less than two years after the 2011 Joplin tornado-and were the first to post their building plans online. Two Nixa schools already have safe rooms, and three more are planned or are under construction. Christian County, which includes Nixa, has been particularly aggressive in pursuing FEMA grants to build tornado-safe rooms in schools. David Welker / for NBC Newsīut Joplin’s devastation didn’t just create traumatic memories it was also the impetus for overhauling southwest Missouri’s disaster preparedness. I still think about that day.” A sign visible in the entrance to the FEMA tornado shelter in Helen Matthews Elementary in Nixa, Mo., describes the guidelines to be followed in case of an emergency. “We were helping people, giving them rides in my dad’s truck. “I saw dead people under the piles of debris,” said Ethan, now 11.

Joplin missouri tornado safe rooms