SCHOOL EMERGENCY ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING

Keeping your students and faculty safe during extreme weather events.

IS YOUR SCHOOL STORM READY?

Since 2010, there have been over 40 tornado events across the United States resulting in close to 750 deaths and many more people injured. Two recent

outbreaks in particular, in Enterprise, Alabama, in 2007 and Moore, Oklahoma, in 2013, pushed the need for increased school building evaluation methods and more proactive design considerations. In response, FEMA and the Oklaho-ma Department of Emergency Management collaborated on a series of training seminars to help architects, engi-neers, and emergency planning personnel better assess the preparedness of schools for extreme weather events. These two agencies developed Safe Schools 101, a two-day workshop providing both information and usable tools for the evaluation and design of safer, protected areas within schools.

SAFE SCHOOLS 101 Part one of the Safe Schools workshop focused on the general characteristics of tornados and provided detailed information on the effects and hazards of high-wind situa-tions. Wind both pulls and pushes on buildings and even the lowest scaled tornados have wind speeds exceeding many design and construction standards for withstanding stress conditions.

Today thousands of existing schools across all states offer little to no protection against these extreme forces. FEMA defines five levels of protection for weather related emer-gencies (see list, next page), and most schools currently are at the lowest level – a basic tornado refuge area deemed safe by school personnel. A clear and consistent method of assessing and evaluating existing schools was shared during part two of the workshop to be used by design professionals and acted upon by each school to raise their level of protection.

HOW ARE SCHOOL BUILDINGS EVALUATED FOR SAFETY? Part of this evaluation method is a checklist for comparing different areas of potential refuge in a building. A general knowledge of building construction methods, an intense review of the construction documents if available, and an on-site investigation of the ac-tual building help in completing the checklist and are a part of the overall assessment.A report is then generated, reviewing all the areas investigated and selecting the best possible refuge area or areas along with recommendations to further increase theprotection level to a hardened room or area.

This article by KSQ was published online by School Construction News in June 2014.

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:• FEMA, in coordination with the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management developed a training program to instruct architects, engineers, and school district personnel on how to assess the preparedness of any school building in response to an extreme weather condition.

• Although a fully compliant FEMA Safe Room is strongly recommended, most schools can increase their safety in these conditions with a greater knowledge of where to find the best location within the school to shelter students. A FEMA assessment is important to this process, which can also include a number of minor facility improvements to further increase the safety of the students within.

• FEMA is now in discussion with the Texas Department of Emergency Management in Denton to bring this program to Texas. Currently there is no formal training or method of assessing Texas schools for tornado and storm shelter preparedness.

KSQ Architects is providing facility assessments to school districts as a free service in an effort to increase awareness of this issue and to help provide the safest area in each school for students to find protection in an extreme weather event.

TAKE REFUGE: FIVE LEVELS OF SCHOOL SAFETY1. Tornado Refuge Area (most schools)

2. Best Available Refuge Area (evaluated by a professional)

3. Hardened Area (areas meeting some wind speed safety requirements)

4. Storm Shelter (ICC 500 requirements, first level of FEMA criteria)

5. Safe Room (meets near absolute protection according to FEMA criteria)

• An assessments goal is to increase the safety level of most buildings from level 1 to level 3/4.

• Most buildings are designed to withstand 90mph wind. An F1/EF1 has wind speeds over 100mph.

• North Texas is in a region where wind speeds can increase to 250mph.

LET US HELP YOUR DISTRICT – SCHEDULE A FREE ASSESSMENT NOW.

Monica Roberts 918.592.0622 (office) mroberts@ksq.design

KSQ Design 323 Mathew Brady Street Tulsa, Oklahoma 74120www.ksq.design

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