Simple Tornado/Hurricane Shelter in Schools

That is good, Netmaker. This idea could be incorporated as a retrofit into existing and new schools, the existing desks used elsewhere. I don't think it needs to be all that thick, but prefab kits would have to be engineered. GA.

At my local college they built a collapsable steel shelter. When deployed it is shaped like a prism (triangular on the end and about 10ft long). It is sturdy enough to survive a wall collapsing on it. Several could be stored on an inside or outside (or both) walls of the school and deployed when a storm approaches. Kids scamper inside and survive the storm.

Extrication may be difficult if the school fell around it though. I understand this was a problem with many of the house shelters people hid in. Perhaps a hydraulic assisted door would help people escape from a normal shelter.

Drew K

I've read FEMA P-320 and FEMA P-361, and cannot recall a desk being mentioned as an approved safe room or shelter.

I agree, your thought is better than nothing, but if money is budgeted for sheltering then it'll be required to comply with guidelines. That's just the way it works.

Did that school have any kind of tornado shelter at all?

It is crazy to think, something could have been done, but red tape and budgets prevent it. Those kids could have had a better chance of surviving and most likely nothing was done because they couldn't budget a shelter for the school.

Ask any survivor or parent of a lost child what they think of red tape. That was a very powerful storm, it is probable that any school funded (not FEMA approved) temporary fix would have been destroyed too...but given any hope, any chance would have been better than nothing.

Drew K

.....ever seen an old pre-1970's home destroyed by a hurricane?

what is left;

the concrete steps

the slab

galvanized water pipes buried in the slab dangling and waving in the air

NO house, no walls, no furniture. . . nothing . . . . but a few of those galvanized steel pipes are still there ( in part) coming out of the foundation.

Guidelines
The curse of modern day living.
Some idiot from the council wanted to install a speed bump 5 yards from the end of our cul de sac... because the guidelines said they should be every 30 metres.

Great game plan Netmaker... just needs Doorman to get off his a$$ and pursuade someone to re-write the guidelines

Del

Did you see this recently: apparently the contractors forgot how wide a car is:-

Well they all drive these maybe?

The public school I went to had solid concrete service corridors of sorts, 4 - 5 feet high 3 - 4 feet wide, running all over under the main building.

I remember in grade school they showed us where they were 2 - 3 times a year and how to get to them in case of a tornado or worse.

Then years later they said they were no longer to be used due to asbestos concerns and we were all to gather in the library or gymnasiums in a case of a tornado. I think it was because it would make finding all the dead bodies easier that way.

None of those locations were solid structures. I can remember the lights swinging due to the roofs going up and down on any normal windy day.

To this day I still think that had a bad tornado hit our school the only people left alive would have been the custodians and me. I didn't care what they said. I would have went to the tunnels anyway.

There is much more to this than simple sheltering. Incidentally, the desks are designed for functionality as desks which serendipitously results in small, strong, structures; I would be worried about large tables because they could catch much more load.

I like the idea of steel framed buildings with insulated metal paneling and insulated metal deck roofing around a core of one or more hardened rooms in the center, these could be heavily reinforced concrete block walls and a concrete roof. The siding and metal roof would be connected to tear away when the wind suction reached a certain level, leaving the structures intact. Each panel would have a tearable side and an anchoring side so they would open up but not fly away to damage other buildings. The core rooms would be rectangular rather than square to keep the roof spans short.

You could add some survival kits attached to bottom of the table shelter too...maybe have the top split and fold down to provide some cover from the sides too....

Oooo check this out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-vr8mgOHZE4

Change that 3/4"-7/8" wood grain top to 3/4" steel sheet.

Immitate those exact legs with steel tubing and yes even the slide down panels out of

lightweight sheet metal......

Lengthen the table to 12'-16' like a Chemistry lab table.

Bolt it into plates that are pre sunk into the slab.

I'd take a chance with it rather than just hiding in the corner.

Vote GA for you my ol' buddy.

I see everyone is overlooking the one very obvious problem. MONEY.

Our culture as a whole doesn't want to spend money to get the average student to be educated over the level of the typical village idiot so how do you think you are going to get them to spend money on building schools or rebuilding schools to survive a tornado.

As is most schools are right on the verge of failing standard safety inspections and newer regulations.

At the moment they are building a new school in my area to handle something like 500 students. The price tag is around $30 million and is highly doubted that it will be on budget before its done!

Hmmm? You got a point there....hence...if I were a teacher in Tornado Alley I'd make dang sure I had some TABLES!

I don't think I overlooked the money. The political problem with my fix is that much of the work is shifted from local tradesman to the factory but I don't think it would cost much more, almost all masonry is reinforced these days by code.

Considering the cost of individual new desks, and the uproar that is coming, I think ideas like the strong lab desk/table might get considered.

Why not having one or more rooms with a "Safety Cage" like the racing cars, extended around the room's walls and ceiling. A thiner Steel mesh on top of the enforcement bars would hold all the debries. This would be cheaper since it is roomier and can accommodate, comfortably, many persons of all sizes,,, just another thought

Hello, when working in Japan (experienced several light earth quakes there) in our company the desks where all heavy steel constructions with room below for an adult. Ok, a bit difficult for me as an European, slight overweight, male to fit into this space and to take shelter in case of an earth quake. We had also our protection helmets there. For moving the desks 4 persons were needed - some of them had casters.

Company wide the "dive below the table" was exercised 2 to 3 times a year and the security officer checked that the spaces were free of "personal archive boxes" -which are pretty common in Japanese offices. The dept mgr. was responsible to enforce this.

The only risk was that the office floor could collapse to the floor below. But as the biggest risk were anyway glass panes flying around - awful to see that when a pane sails down from a high riser.. Against this risk the desk would be already good cover.

During a stronger earth quake (hanging ceiling pieces where coming down our super market) the kids where immediately rushed into the space below the cash register which was placed on such a sturdy steel desk. To train even kindergarden children Tokyo fire brigade has a special truck with the replica of a typical living room which can be shaken by hydraulics to give real feeling of an earth quake and train already the 3 year old to dive under the table (well supported by the kindergarden teachers and starting with mild quakes and later stronger shaking. All pretty realistic...

The biggest problem I see with ducking for cover under a school desk is that it affords little or no protection from laterally traveling "projectiles", such as timber, glass, and sheet metal....hell, just about anything and everything.

A 2x4 piece of lumber can easily be picked up by tornado winds and punched all the way through a standard Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU) wall where the block cells have not been filled with concrete and steel reinforcement bars, both horizontally and vertically.

Let's not forget that most deaths associated with twisters are caused by projectiles and being crushed by building materials.

Precisely. The images we see are of desks, intact, after the storm.

We didn't see these being tossed about during the storm. The desks themselves (the current version used today) might very well have posed quite a threat.

Yes - the desks.

Back in the Cold War days (late 50's / early 60's) we had monthly air raid drills in public schools. Now, we are talking about nuclear warfare here, but guess what we all did when the siren sounded? Yes - we hid under our desks. Joke used to be, that was to make it easier for us to kiss our a__ goodbye. They apparently are a somewhat substantial form of protection, although I doubt they'd do a thing to stop radiation. Tornado damage - may well help a bit.

Yakking is fine. Reinventing the wheel is not.

I traveled thru florida after Homestead was wiped out. Two buildings stood, like untouched. A precast modular parking building and a precast modular office building with most its windows intact.

Afterwards, a number of manufactrurers offered steel "walk-in closets" to be installed in homes for a few thousand $s, to provide family size shelters.

Schools and large public buildings need only a central "auditorium" built the same modular or cast concrete way.

Definitely NOT the whole buildings. Cost increase is noticeable, not decisive.

One significant note: It is not permitted to be airtight. Pressure equalization thru heavy wire mesh prevents the twister to exert up to 1 ton force per square meter, and rip the shelter apart.

Basements are effective, but people drown there from the downpour, as it happened this last time.

'Afterwards, a number of manufactrurers offered steel "walk-in closets"' - This gives me an idea... How about having all those school lockers double as shelters? Kinda crazy I know, but it might be something economical

If I were the concerned parent here, I would want the schools when built new, to incorporate safe rooms, and during drills the students all go there. When this is no drill, they know precisely where to go and what to do.

Texas Tech University has extensive experience and expertise and has been recommending adding safe rooms to buildings for years. How much does reinforced concrete add to the cost of one room of a building?

http://www.depts.ttu.edu/weweb/shelters/inresshelter.php

Adding one safe room, which may also be your bed room closet, to each residence would save lives.

FEMA has brochures for building safe rooms base on Texas Tech designs.

FEMA info for building tornado safe rooms:

http://www.fema.gov/safe-room-resources/fema-p-320-taking-shelter-storm-building-safe-room-your-home-or-small-business

http://www.fema.gov/safe-room-resources/fema-p-361-design-and-construction-guidance-community-safe-rooms

Thank you for the information. I was not aware that A&M was involved with this.

Hey Cajun: Texas Tech University is primarily located in Lubbock, Texas, and does extensive research on tornado damage using among other things, an air cannon.

Texas A&M University is primarily located in College Station, Texas, but I do not know whether or not they have an air cannon, or any other particular interest in tornado damage.

Both are really great universities, and are among the top tier of research universities in the United States, if not the world. Be respectful.

but I do not know whether or not they have an air cannon,
Nope! we would just all sneeze in the same direction.

I just about needed a shelter of my own last night! West facing windows had about 8 panes busted in by golf ball size hail!

I made an air cannon at West Texas A&M that launched a normal tennis ball over 1.5 football fields...so if A&M needs one, I can loan them mine (or make a new bigger one!!!)

~Anon~

The social club I was in at McMurry Univ. had their own (real cannon) made from an old drive shaft. It had spoke wheels about 18" diameter, and a spade for a rearward anchor, which made the recoil somewhat troublesome. We used nitrocellulose reloading granules for propellant, a beer can wrapped in red rags for a plunger, and all sorts of reviling stuff for a shot (mainly to sling cow poo, eggs, mud, etc.) at a rival social club's pledges who would hang out in a tree overnight. The thing nearly took my head off as it recoiled over the side rails of the pickup truck we were using as troop transport that night, but the fellow throwing raw eggs at us really did duck when he saw me light the fuse.

I didn't even think of using reviling ammunition!...there is a fraternity in Canyon, mine is small enough to be portable...nah, I wouldn't want to clean it afterwords and due to the design (rupture disk to launch) reloading time is excessive.

~Anon~

Could have been worse - he could have confused your school with the one that has that big cow as a mascot.

You're right. That would have been much worse.

De-horn 'em Raiders!

The fact that the desks were standing does not indicate that the people sheltering under them were also unharmed. Although protected from falling debris, they may have been harmed by missiles.