Tag Archives: school safe room

Tornado Shelters – “FEMA Approved”?..I think not!

I have been working with FEMA in some way, shape, or form since 1999 when I volunteered to design the first tornado shelter/safe room in the country to meet 250 mph wind criteria. This was pre-FEMA 361 era when we didn’t even have doors that had been tested for tornadic winds! It was quite a challenge but was well worth the time and effort. Luckily, FEMA made sure that I had support during this design; support from the likes of Texas Tech University, Clemson University, Greenhorne & O’mara engineers, and FEMA themselves. In the end, it was a successful project considering what we had to work with. Since then, I have worked closely with FEMA and their consultants trying to make things better with tornado shelter/safe room design and construction.

One thing that I have learned during the past 15 years is FEMA does NOT approve, certify, or even recommend designers or product manufacturers….PERIOD! It is against their policy to do such a thing. Don’t believe me? Go to FEMA.gov (http://www.fema.gov/safe-rooms/frequently-asked-questions-tornado/hurricane-safe-rooms#Q10) and look it up yourself! So, when you are looking for a tornado shelter/safe room designer, or a tornado resistant product and their literature states “FEMA Approved”, or “FEMA Certified”, or “FEMA Recommended”, this should throw up a red flag to you. They are not telling you the truth about FEMA and that should make you ask “What else are they not being truthful about?” The designers, designs, or products may be “FEMA COMPLIANT” meaning they meet FEMA guidelines and requirements but rest assured they are NOT “FEMA Approved/Certified/Recommended”.

FEMA has done a pretty good job at contacting manufacturers and product suppliers that make the false claims but they cannot catch them all! Purchasing anything relative to tornado shelter/safe rooms whether it be architectural services, engineering services, pre-manufactured shelter/safe rooms, or shelter/safe room components, it is a “buyer beware” market, almost to the level of the Wild West. There are so many people out there that claim to be “experts”, claim to be “approved”, you need to check there credentials, check their references! You can easily spend as much money on something that is wrong as you can on something that is right. And having something wrong in the middle of a tornado is not a good position to be in. Shelter/safe room problems will rear their ugly heads at the EXACT moment that you need your shelter/safe room the most.

IF FEMA ever changes their policy, I will be the first in line to get “Approved”!

Be careful out there!

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

Tornado Shelters relative to Sky Diving. (What the….?)

For those of us who love to fly in aircraft of all types and sizes, sky divers are a weird breed. For us, the old adage “why would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?” applies to all sky divers. So what do perfectly good airplanes and jumping out of them have to do with tornado shelter/safe rooms? Well…plenty! You would be amazed how many shelter/safe rooms have been constructed in schools only to have the Board of Education have a policy when the National Weather Service has forecasted potential tornadic activity, the school district is either not going to have school that day or if kids are in class, they will be sent home. Are you kidding me? They have a perfectly designed, engineered, and constructed shelter/safe room (airplane) and the kids will be sent home (pushed out of the perfectly good airplane). The difference in the analogy is the kids may not have a parachute (shelter option) to keep them from hitting the ground!

Why these policies? Because schools boards do not want to be R E S P O S I B L E for the kids should a tornado hit the school. WOW! WOW! WOW! I am astonished for this reason; School Boards do not want to be responsible for the kids in a shelter/safe room when a tornado strikes, even though the students can have near absolute protection but the BOE has a clear conscience sending kids home, some to poorly constructed homes, some to pre-manufactured homes, without basements or shelter of any type, possibly to their deaths. And they have NO responsibility for this? I am no lawyer, and maybe not the sharpest tack in the box, but I am a parent and believe you me, if my child would parish in a storm due to this policy, I am holding someone accountable! Quite frankly, these types of policies should be illegal! Did I say “WOW”?

Another issue that I continue to hear from schools that thankfully don’t have the “Send ‘em home” policy, however, still relative to sky diving, is parents that feel the need during a tornado warning to go to their child’s school, pick up their child, and take them home when the school has a perfectly good “airplane”. Wait….Wait for it….“WOW”! In my humble opinion, there are five things wrong with this scenario; 1) The parent needlessly exposed themselves to the tornadic event, 2) if the shelter is locked down, now the shelter has to be opened potentially exposing all occupants to the event, 3) The parent needlessly pushes their child out of the “perfectly good airplane”, 4) The parent is not only exposing themselves for the second time but is also exposing their child, 5) unless they have an equal shelter at the location where they are taking the child, this decision may cost the child’s life. How tragic that would be?

In these type of cases, I advise my clients to tell ALL parents that during a tornadic event, for the safety of their child(ren) and their safety, DO NOT come to school to take their kids. For those that are not very good listeners, when the parent gets to the shelter, they are directed to come into the shelter/safe room and STAY with their child but under no circumstance should they let the child or the parent leave. Sound harsh?….Maybe….but it truly is for their own good!

Be careful out there!

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

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 Shelters – Buyer Beware

I continue to be amazed at the ingenuity and creativity by people trying to create a better mouse trap especially when you have an industry that is not regulated. It brings out the “wanna-be-engineers” that sometimes quite frankly don’t have a clue!

In particular, there is a tornado shelter for residents and they are touting it for schools that is actually on wheels. Now I want you to stop and think about that for just a moment…tornado shelter on WHEELS!!! It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to say “Wait a second, is this a shelter or a bad carnival ride?”

Now in fairness, this particular shelter is anchored to a concrete floor on one edge. It is accordion like and can be moved with a simple pull of a lever. THEN you have to install these cross bars at the hinge points, then you have to install these big drop in bolts into the floor to hold down the moveable end of the shelter. Their claim to fame is you can install one of these in every classroom and they save space! They fold up against the wall to a depth of 17” and you can put a white board on the face of it so you don’t lose wall space.

In my professional opinion, here’s the problems that I see with this shelter concept:

Contrary to their OWN specifications directly off their own website, the shelters do not meet the FEMA P-361, or the ICC-500 and therefore will NOT meet the IBC 2015,
1. No toilets (must have one that is ADA accessible)
2. No hand washing facilities
3. Not enough space as prescribed (per their claim, largest shelter will hold 9 not including space for portable toilet or wheelchair.)
4. No fire extinguisher
5. No fire separation from the host building
6. Not ADA accessible
7. Open space under the moveable portions of the shelter which may exceed the requirements of the 2014 ICC-500 (not yet published)
8. No compliant ventilation system
9. One door with no emergency escape hatch (required in current ICC-500)
The door is out swinging therefore can be blocked by debris very easily.
You have to keep the floor space clear in front of the shelter in order to deploy it or have to plan on taking time to rearrange furniture.
They are directing you to bolt this down to a concrete slab that has not been engineered to resist the forces necessary, (BIG PROBLEM!)
Bolts that one has to put into the floor after the shelter is deployed will have some type of receiver in the floor (see item 3). What if these holes over time fill with dirt/debris and one cannot get the bolt in?
It takes up floor space (more than the 17” advertised) and is a single use shelter!

In a school situation, a classroom with 24 students and one teacher, so, conservatively, you would need a minimum of 3 of these large shelters per classroom at approximately $15,000 each or $45,000 per classroom. To protect 600 occupants would be the equivalent of 24 classrooms or a total cost of (24 x $45,000) $1,080,000, and still not meet FEMA guidelines OR code standards! In this part of the country, we can design and build a 4 classroom fully equipped shelter that does meet the requirements for that same cost!

In my opinion, these type shelters may work well in residential (single family) situations but fails once they stepped over the line into the community shelter realm. And they are not the only ones. Requirements for residential shelters are much less stringent than for community shelters. Many shelter producers just don’t understand this! So..BUYER BEWARE!!

Talk with someone that knows about shelters ESPECIALLY for a community shelter situation. It could save you in the long run!

Be careful out there!