What happened to Plaza Towers Elementary was a direct impact of the tornado...

[cynatnite]

All the ideas people have are well-meaning, but also unrealistic. I grew up in this part of the country. I went to school at Plaza Towers and Kelley Elementary in Moore. Kelley was demolished by a tornado in 1999.

It was a state of the art building designed to withstand powerful storms. We used to have our tornado drills at both schools in the hallways.

Basements were not built because they are very expensive addition. You're talking not just these schools, but many others in the school system. That's not to mention all the schools in tornado alley which stretches across several states. The costs have to be weighed which is difficult with school budgets.

While they will rebuild, it's hard to say whether or not they will add basements to the destroyed schools. I imagine they will do what is most feasible when it comes to rebuilding keeping in mind everything that happened.

It seems to me that we should put as much funds as possible towards the science of these storms. We need to do a better job in predicting these storms. Not just in giving more time to escape, but also do a better job of predicting the track, the intensity and the scope of these storms.

BTW, all our friends and family is safe. Some lost their homes, but everyone is safe.

[niyad]

1. I am so glad to know all your friends and family are safe. seeing the pictures of the devastation

was just wrenching.

from what I read, that tornado in 99 was an ef5, with winds over 300 miles an hour. almost unimaginable. and it seems that the track of the two tornadoes was very close to each other, too.

[Scuba]

2. "Basements were not built because they are very expensive addition."

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10022877128

[Brickbat]

3. It's like people think that those who live in Tornado Alley have never considered these things

before.

[aquart]

4. And put a few shekels toward the science of basements.

Lose a few kids=save a few bucks. Makes sense.

[cynatnite]

6. wouldn't it be nice to have that simplistic of a world?

Because we're talking a huge school system, a limited budget, and building large enough and safe enough basements is expensive.

I grew up in this area and the schools I went to had no basements. We had tornado drills. The closest thing we had to a basement at a school was a room on the lower level with the building on top of us.

I wish it were as simple as many make it out to be, but it's not and never will be.

[aquart]

10. It is exactly that simple.

And the limited budget expands IF YOU TAX THE RICH.

So it's Oklahoma's children vs. a car elevator in every mansion.

If Oklahoma is willing to sacrifice its children so an oilman can buy that third Ferrari, it is a simple choice to make.

Meantime, New York and California are covering your bills.

[HappyMe]

5. I am glad you are all safe.

I'm sure people there will do what ever is possible to further ensure their safety at home and in public buildings.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. There's no doubt that school systems have limited budgets and costs have to be considered

That said, I think the larger point people are making is that there is no ACTUAL shortage of resources for that type of thing. The shortage is completely manufactured by greed and bad policy. What one hedge fund manager makes in one year could equip every school in Moore and surrounding counties with storm protection areas. A state 3% levy on income over $1 million could build storm protection areas for every school in Oklahoma. There is no ACTUAL scarcity. There is only a manufactured scarcity. That's not a "simplistic" view of the world. A simplistic view of the world is just going along with the idea that some people stash a billion dollars in an offshore bank or investment vehicle while schools in tornado alley don't have money for storm protection. That's the simplistic view of the world in my book.

[DCKit]

8. ^ This. nt

[Demo_Chris]

9. Yes there is a shortage of funding...

In both the PRACTICAL sense and the absolute.

Practical, in that we live in a nation that apparently cannot even manage a free and decent school lunch for kids who rely on this as their main meal of the day. One in five American kids -- kids in YOUR neighborhood and mine -- went to bed hungry last night, they take turns eating dinner with their siblings because their family cannot afford more, and neither party is doing a damn thing about it.
Hell, our party just passed permanent tax cuts for wealthy, money that could have paid for this, but we decided the rich needed the money more than those hungry children.

So no, there is no money for hundreds of thousands of mass occupancy multi-million dollar storm bunkers. We don't have money for hot dogs.

Taking that a step further, do the math. take a theoretical small town with 5000 people and a half dozen schools. Each would need it's own mass occupancy disaster bunker, each would cost millions, and each would need to be maintained. If you could build one of these for, say, 3 million a pop, you are talking about adding somewhere in the realm of a hundred bucks a month to every family's property tax bill. Forever. Or put another way, you are likely more than doubling the property taxes people pay -- this is an absolute impossibility of course, only the 1% could afford it -- and all to avoid an event that is unlikely to occur in anyone's lifetime.

Schools need to be made stronger, but there is a point at which there is nothing to be done. And at that point science takes over. We need to understand these storms better, we need better radars, better warning systems (my town's warning system hasn't worked in five or six years despite being hit by two tornados in that time period -- no money), better understanding.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. I am glad your family is ok

But...we all should look not just into the science...done mostly by the Feds at Norman Ok...but truly, we need to rebuild infrastructure, that might mean taxes to build safer structures for people, not stadiums.

By the way, I will say that about my town as well. We need better evacuation routes, as well as invest money in fire dept (speaking of disasters). My county board has gotten silly. We can build a county FD on the cheap, really.

These games of priorities and taxation, or lack off...go on everywhere.

What is true is that your state, and they should, is getting a lot of federal aid right now, but the discussions in congress will be epic.

[Matariki]

12. But there's budget for this...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2877128

It's really tragic when people choose tax breaks for the wealthy over their children's lives.

[hedgehog]

13. I've been trying to find out how the building was constructed.

It appears that the roof lifted away, and the walls then tipped and/or crumbled beneath the remaining roof beams. . (That's my best guess from the pictures, not a careful engineering analysis!)

So some questions -

Were the block walls reinforced with concrete and re-bar?

How were the walls braced?

How were the walls and roof secured to the slab?

Moving to the inside hall is a good protection from flying debris and broken glass, but if the roof isn't secure and the walls can be broken .....

For what it's worth - it's very possible that everyone involved thought the building was state of the art - but if reports are accurate, the kids in 4th to 6th grade bussed to a nearby church before the tornado struck. Why would they be evacuated from a "state of the art" building?

[laundry_queen]

14. About the science

I follow a lot of storm chasers (And read a lot about tornadoes and have seen a few myself...)

One thing that was mentioned by a few seasoned storm chasers was that there is a possibility they have reached the limit of prediction of tornadoes. Meaning that they have studied and studied all of the variables. They have launched instruments into tornadoes. They have studied weather maps and patterns. They have studied humidity levels and wind speeds at the surface during a tornado before, during and after...and still, they can see few patterns that predict which cumulonimbus cloud will turn into a tornadic supercell, where a tornado will touch down or how strong a tornado will be. There is a possibility that, like gene selection during conception, tornadoes form at random. Of course the 'ingredients' have to be there, but whether or not a tornado happens is random. There have been several examples of strong tornadoes happening where they weren't supposed to (even without mesocyclones - which are usually associated with weak tornadoes) and of course, of tornadoes NOT happening when they were supposed to (all the ingredients in place, but not much happened). They have gotten better - average warning time has gone up significantly but from what I understand, a lot of the 'lead time' has to do almost entirely with Doppler radar and storm spotters in the field, not because of any predictions of when/where a tornado will form.

I personally think money is better spent on building design to protect people. A lot of lead time doesn't matter to people in a trailer park with no shelter. You could have 3 hours of warning time, but if people have no where safe to go, they are sitting ducks.

A tornado hit where I live when I was a kid - an F4 (arguably F5 - long story) - and while it destroyed neighborhoods, no one who had a basement died. The most casualties were from people caught on the highway, people in industrial areas and people in trailer parks. The trailer park that was hit soon after built a shelter for residents to go to when there are tornado warnings. Now, I'm in an area where tornadoes are relatively rare. The F4 in 1987 hasn't been repeated in the province since then (that has been documented anyway). And yet, people here plan for it - for the day another one rumbles through - which it probably won't in my lifetime. It's really incredulous to everyone I know who lives HERE that people who live in an area where this is a yearly event aren't interested in spending money to design buildings to protect people.

We know that safe rooms built out of a double wall of reinforced concrete are your next safest bet next to an underground shelter - why not make it a new building code? Grandfather it in...new builds HAVE to have these rooms. Make it law that older neighborhoods have to install community shelters. THIS is where money should be spent. Figure out the most cost effective manner to protect people, to build shelters....The science of tornadoes is reaching it's peak right now, and I think it makes more sense to figure out ways to protect people - because it'll be 100 years at LEAST (if ever) before we can predict exactly where a tornado path will be and how strong a tornado's wind speeds will be. People in vulnerable areas can't wait for the science to catch up.