Safe-Room Designs for School Safety (with Related Video)
Oct 1, 2011 12:00 PM, By Freddie Lynn Jr., AIA, and Carla Percival-Young, AIA
Recent tornadoes and other natural disasters are prompting schools to incorporate storm shelters into their designs.
Storm damage left a gaping hole in the DeKalb County Sports Hall of Fame, Plainview, Ala.
During the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the cold war, Americans had a deep fear of a nuclear attack. Buildings were designated with black and yellow signs indicating "Fallout Shelter," and some families built underground shelters in their back yards. School children routinely practiced drills in which they took cover under their desks or in school basements until the air-raid signals were silent and all was clear.
After President Kennedy persuaded the Soviet Union to turn back missiles headed for Cuba, and nuclear bombs never dropped, fears eased, and many residential shelters were abandoned or converted to other uses. The "Fallout Shelter" signs often seen in cities and towns have become fewer and fewer.
Today, the threat that has caught the attention of many Americans is not from a foreign country: It is Mother Nature herself. 2010 and 2011 may go down as two of the most destructive years in our recent history: The Haiti earthquake; the Icelandic volcanoes; the Japan earthquake and tsunami; flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers; wildfires raging in Texas. And, a deadly string of tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri that struck in spring 2011. These catastrophes were a grim reminder to education institutions that tornadoes are a continual threat and need to be addressed in building design.
Disaster reaction
The threat of tornadoes in Alabama is not new. On Thursday, March 1, 2007, a tornado struck Enterprise High School in Enterprise, Ala., destroying the school and killing eight students. In contrast, when a tornado touched down in Atoka County, Okla., April 14, 2011, nearly 200 men, women, children and firefighters survived 165-miles-per-hour winds by taking shelter in a safe room in Tushka Public School.
Alabama lawmakers reacted to the Enterprise tragedy with legislation to make safe rooms mandatory in public schools. Any new public school construction contract awarded on or after July 1, 2010, must include an Alabama Building Commission-approved safe space or hallway. Alabama’s Building Commission adopted the International Code Council/National Storm Shelter Association (ICC/NSSA) Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters (ICC 500-2008) as the minimum building code for safe spaces.
After the devastating tornado in Joplin, Mo., on May 22 and the barrage of 326 confirmed tornadoes throughout Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia from April 25 to 28, other states are likely to adopt tornado safe room legislation. Six Alabama schools received catastrophic damage from the April tornadoes and must be replaced, and at least three other Alabama schools had extensive roof damage. Those schools had dismissed students prior to the storms, or we may have seen a repeat of the Enterprise tragedy. The state’s school architect’s office indicated that, had tornadoes taken a different path through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, more than 50 schools could have been damaged.
Why ICC 500?
ICC 500 provides standards for hurricane and tornado storm shelters. Hurricane storm shelters are designed for sustained storms of longer duration and are designed for longer terms of occupancy, providing people with places to sleep and cook. For tornado shelters, the standards call for structures to withstand winds up to 250 miles an hour and are designed to be occupied for shorter durations.
Currently, Alabama’s legislation applies only to tornado storm shelters and is limited to new public school construction. The reasoning in requiring a tornado storm shelter but not a hurricane storm shelter has to do with the warning time.
"With a tornado, you have a very short warning," says Katherine Lynn, director of the Alabama Building Commission. "You don’t have time to load students on buses and get them home; with a hurricane, the affected schools usually have several days advance warning."
The legislation applies only to new construction because of the difficulty upgrading an existing school. However, after this year’s tornadoes, many institutions may want to reconsider their level of protection. In Alabama, the Emergency Management Association will help evaluate existing schools or public facilities and advise school officials on the safest place in that facility to take shelter. Architects and engineers who are asked to renovate existing school facilities can contact FEMA and should rely on FEMA 431: Tornado Protection: Selecting Refuge Areas in Buildings.
It would be ideal if ICC 500 could be applied to other community or municipal buildings where large groups of people gather, but for now, lawmakers are concentrating on protecting education facilities.
"With children being in school for the amount of time they are, they represent the greatest risk," says Lynn. "The number of children in school on a given day usually far exceeds the number of people who may be in a public library or city hall, for example."
The 2009 International Building Code includes the ICC 500 standards for storm-shelter design. However, it does not mandate that buildings include a storm shelter, only that if a storm shelter is included, it should comply with the ICC 500. Fourteen states have adopted the 2009 International Building Code statewide (as of April 2011), but Alabama was the only state with legislation mandating the ICC 500 standard for storm shelters in new, public school construction.
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