New Construction Keeps Wichita Students Safe And Sound (Wichita Eagle)

Regional Director Dick Hainje congratulates Wichita Public School officials on their tornado shelter initiative during remarks at OK Elementary. Pictured clockwise with Mr. Hainje are David Banks, Wichita Public Schools Energy Manager, Phil Fullerton, OK Elementary Principal, Gene Krase, Kansas Division of Emergency Management Administrator, and Randy Duncan, Sedgwick County Emergency Management Director. (Photo by Susan Arensman)

Wichita Eagle (KS)
By Josh Funk
November 10, 2002

Parents at 30 Wichita schools will soon be able to cross severe weather off their list of things to worry about during the day. Strange as it sounds, they can thank the 1999 tornadoes that destroyed one south Wichita school and damaged two others for that peace of mind.

The school district, armed with its $285 million bond issue and federal storm-safety grants awarded after the tornadoes, has been fortifying parts of its schools to withstand winds up to 250 mph.

The so-called safe rooms have been built at 14 schools so far. Ten others are under construction, and six more are to be built over the next two years.

Parents can see the results at such schools as Kensler Elementary, whose 105 kindergartners are sheathed by 10-inch-thick concrete walls and protected from Mother Nature's fury by 2 ½-inch-thick steel doors that can cover the windows.

In the process, the district has drawn praise from federal officials as a pioneer of storm safety that other schools can emulate.

The district has built safe rooms out of multipurpose rooms, conference rooms and even classroom wings, which had never been done before.

Superintendent Winston Brooks said the bond issue came at just the right time to take advantage of the federal safe-room money. The bond issue work that was already planned served as a local match for the grants, allowing the district to improve storm safety without spending more of its own money.
"I think everything just came together miraculously well," he said. "It's unfortunate it all got started with a tornado.

"It's a great deal," he said. "Parents should feel a lot more secure now that their children are going to be safe in schools."

Safe, and quiet
Both Kensler and McCollom elementary schools started the year with new classroom additions that serve as their shelters.

Kensler's kindergarten teachers have noticed the difference of teaching in a safe room.

"It's quieter compared to where I was before," teacher Nancy Stevens said.

At first glance, the five new classrooms at Kensler look like any other kindergarten classes, but aside from the hum of the ventilation system, very little noise passes through the precast concrete walls.

Because the classroom wing has to hold the entire school during storm warnings, the classrooms are 50 percent larger than normal, at 32 feet by 30 feet.

"We like the extra space for kindergartners to run around," teacher Judy Hatteburg said.

The heart of the safe room design -- welded connections between the roof and walls and between the walls and the floor -- is hidden in the construction, said architect Corey Schultz, who designed Kensler's and McCollom's additions.

But those connections, along with the extra layer of concrete poured on the roof and 12-foot-deep anchors on the foundation, keep students safe, said Schultz, of PBA Architects.

And parents appreciate the added safety.

"I'm really grateful and glad we do have it," said Darla Tucker, who is president of Kensler's site council and a substitute teacher at the school. "You feel a lot safer, and I think it reassures the kids, too, that it will be OK."

To help federal officials establish their guidelines for safe room construction, the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University studied the destruction left by 90 different storms to learn what withstands tornadoes.

Then the wind lab tested safe room designs by firing a 15-pound 2-by-4 out of a cannon at 100 mph at doors and walls. Flying debris is often the most dangerous part of a tornado.

Now school staff like Kensler principal Joan Hearne can know their students will be safe.
"I think peace of mind is big," Hearne said.

How we got here
Emergency management and Wichita school officials had to rethink their shelter plans after the 1999 tornadoes that struck Kansas and Oklahoma.

Those storms damaged some of the places, such as the hallways of Greiffenstein Special Education Center, where students and staff normally would huddle during a storm. A tall boiler chimney collapsed into the hallway and could have injured or killed students.

Fortunately that tornado struck in the evening, so students weren't around. But the school was a total loss.

The stringent guidelines for safe rooms were issued in July 2000, just a few months after Wichita's bond issue passed.

The district, led by facilities director Roger Savage, jumped on the idea. They trained area architects how to build safe rooms and asked that the rooms be incorporated into bond issue projects wherever possible.

And if a safe room can't be built as part of the bond project, the current shelter space is being improved.

That's why the Federal Emergency Management Agency now points to the Wichita school district as the example to follow.

The agency's brochures overflow with pictures and descriptions of the storm damage and subsequent safe rooms built at Jefferson Elementary School, Greiffenstein and Chisholm Life Skills Center.

Across Kansas, 13 schools in Reno, Sumner and Labette counties have received FEMA grants to build safe rooms.

How schools are chosen
Even emergency management officials did not realize the potential weaknesses of traditional school shelter areas.

"Not being a structural engineer, I didn't realize how little shelter some places were offering until the 1999 tornadoes," said Jack Kegley, deputy director of Sedgwick County Emergency Management.

Kegley had visited every school in the county to identify their safest shelter areas before the 1999 storms, recommending improvements where needed.

Based on those safety evaluations, Savage and his staff in the facilities division of the Wichita district decided which schools needed safe rooms most.

The district has focused its safe room construction at elementary, special education and early childhood schools because those are the smallest buildings offering the least shelter and those children are least able to protect themselves, Savage said.

Middle and high schools, he said, are generally larger and offer good interior protection.

The amount of FEMA grant money available will determine which schools get safe rooms in the future, Savage said. The district has grant applications pending for Emerson, Harris, Riverside, Woodland and Woodman elementary schools and one other unnamed school.

At schools without safe rooms, students and staff will continue to seek refuge in interior rooms and hallways away from windows on the first floor. Those spaces are being improved as part of the bond issue with added safety glass and steel doors in place of wood or glass.

What the money buys
The Wichita district has received $4.6 million in FEMA grants and hopes to get more before all the bond issue projects are completed by fall 2005.

"Once they see you have good worthwhile projects, they make money available," Savage said.
The grants have paid for the cost difference between standard construction, which the district estimates is about $100 per square foot, and fortified construction, which costs about $135 per square foot.

A fortified, 4,500-square-foot multipurpose room, which serves as an elementary school's gym and cafeteria, costs between $500,000 and $600,000, Savage said. FEMA pays for $150,000 on those projects.

Emergency management official Laurie Bestgen, who helps Kansas schools apply for the grants, hopes that more districts consider building safe rooms.

"When you're doing bond construction or any construction, there should be a question as you go through, 'Have you considered including a tornado shelter?' If not, why not?"

© 2002 The Wichita Eagle, with permission. Any copying, redistribution, or retransmission of any of the contents without the express written consent of The Wichita Eagle is expressly prohibited.