Thursday, June 6, 2013

State Rep. to take school 'safe room' issue directly to Okla. voters



>>> check this out. this is a tornado drill in an american school in 1947 . now the kids in this particular school happened to be in indiana. but crouching in the hallway and covering your head and hoping for the best. that was the state of the art response to tornadoes just about everywhere in our country. in 1947 . it is still the state of the art in 2013 . on hearing the news that a tornado is coming, american school kids in most places that get these kind of storms are still sent into the hallways to crouch and cover their heads. get as far inside the building as you can, stay away from big open areas like the gym or the cafeteria, get low to the ground, maybe pray. i'm not making light of this advice in this kind of plan. it really is better than nothing. and it really is the best you could do in a lot of places if and when a tornado is bearing down. drop and tuck or duck and cover , that was the plan 60 years ago, it is still the plan now in much of the country. last month in moore , oklahoma , an ef-5 tornado struck two elementary schools . it had winds in excess of 200 miles an hour. that tornado was a mile wide and those kids at those schools pretty much had nowhere to go. so they went into the hallways like school kids have done for generations. the kids in moore took shelter in hallways and bathrooms ducking and covering and at one of the two elementary schools , briarwood elementary, all the kids lived, at the other, seven kids died. the official cause of death from each of them was asphyxia, they were smothered in the collapse of the hallway. neither of the schools had a storm shelter underground or a fortified safe room aboveground. when the tornado struck, these kids really had nowhere safe to hide. they did survive in the school where the hallways didn't all collapse but they did not survive in the school that was harder hit. when people talk about safe rooms, it almost sounds like a metaphor, but it is a specific thing for storm survival. it's a structure, a room like this, a concrete reenforced aboveground bunker. scientists at the national wind institute at texas tech university have been testing these rooms out. they fire debris at them at really high speeds simulating the effects of a real tornado and the kind of debris that flies at those kinds of speeds. after the deadly tornado last month in moore , oklahoma , the one that killed seven kids at that school and 23 people in all, after that storm , those same scientists went occupy and examined what happened to the safe rooms that were in that community in the path of that tornado . turns out they all held. it turns out that if you had somewhere to go, if you had a safe room to take shelter in from that ef-5 tornado that hit moore , oklahoma , then that safe room really did protect you. they found 16 of them, these specifically built, specifically re-enforced safe rooms in the path of destruction in moore . the scientists from texas tech who investigated how they all faired in the storm said, quote, they all performed great. the oklahoma newspaper reports that in some cases the safe rooms were the only part of the house that made it through that tornado . but they made it. they worked. after that devastating tornado in moore , a state lawmaker down the road in rush springs , oklahoma , decided to do something about safe rooms. lawmaker joe dorman has been trying to pass laws about storm safety in oklahoma for a few years now. but he is a democrat and the oklahoma legislature is controlled by republicans. so far they have voted down everything he tried. after the moore tornado two weeks ago, he thought maybe now he could get a bill passed. joe dorman proposed that the state spend about $500 million to build more safe rooms for schools and homes. that new bill after the moore tornado for moore safe rooms that saved lives that might have saved those school kids that died, that bill like all the others went nowhere in the oklahoma state legislature . but then it happened again. another huge storm went barrelling through oklahoma . one giant tornado struck el reno , oklahoma , which like moore , oklahoma , is a suburb of oklahoma city . that tornado on friday in el reno was also an ef-5, and while everybody was astonished by the size of that mile wide tornado that hit moore , that one in el reno was more than 2 1/ 2 miles wide. this is the widest tornado on record ever. so wide that observers had trouble figuring out exactly where it was because it seemed like it was everywhere. students at a vocational school in the path of the huge storm managed to get underground before that funnel cloud destroyed their building. now the superintendent of that school says that any rebuilding he does is going to include some kind of safe room. quote, when you see the devastation and you see the end result, it clears up for you pretty quick. the death toll so far from that tornado outbreak on friday is 18 people dead. but everybody at that vo-tech school lived because they had an underground shelter to get to. with back to back tragedies like this in her state , mary fallin says oklahoma must have a vigorous discussion about providing safe places for schools. about what the state can do, she says, quote, within budgetary means. budgetary means, of course, depend largely on the decisions of the elected officials of oklahoma who, after all, pass a budget and set taxes to pay for it and sign those budgetary means into law. can the elected officials of oklahoma muster the political will to spend money on something like this? nobody likes spending, but tornado shelters in school buildings that work that have been proven to work again and again and again? can we do that? oklahoma 's elected officials do not seem to think so. after the tornado in moore , a bipartisan group of lawmakers decided instead of legislating anything they would form a nonprofit called shelter oklahoma schools to try to raise private money for safe rooms. the kids at plaza towers did not have to parish one of the corporate donors wrote. we cannot wait for our government to fix this. can't the government fix this? why should kids at any school in oklahoma have to hope for a corporate bailout that might make their school safer instead of the schools just being safer by virtue of the fact that they are oklahoma schools and oklahoma takes responsibility for deeping them safe? well, joe dorman , the same state lawmaker who has tried for years now to get something done on storm safety who tried again just last month, now he says he plans to try to go around the legislature. he plans to try to gather signatures for a citizens initiative in oklahoma . he plans to put this policy question about storm shelters directly to the people. he says he believes they will do and they can do what the legislature will not and apparently cannot. joining us now is joe dorman , a state representative from oklahoma , he hopes to establish $500 million bond for safe rooms in 2014 . thank you very much for being with us tonight.

>> good evening, rachel. thank you for having me.

>> you know this issue a lot better than i do. i feel like i'm learning it day by day . did i say anything screwy about this policy idea and how these shelters have performed in the past?

>> no, you're on target. the shelters have been proven to provide that safe mechanism for people to have a place to go during a tornado . and while none of them are 100% safe, it increases your odds of survival like we saw in moore and el reno .

>> oklahoma is in the heart of tornado country. this has been a tremendously difficult year, but a lot of other years have been difficult too. the clear examples over many years of people using shelters and safe rooms to survive otherwise not survivable storms. what is it about the legislature that has caused them to turn back new laws about storm safety given how much it's been proven over and over again in this state ?

>> i started this fight a few years ago when one of my constituents died. she was in a mobile home park, she left her mobile home to go to a building on the area where the trailers were at. it was locked. so on her way back to her trailer, she was crushed by another trailer. and after that, we worked to try and get shelters and mobile home parks and apartment complexes and that stiff opposition through the legislature.

>> why are they opposed? is it just a general idea that the state law and state regulation shouldn't be telling private citizens what to do?

>> that's part of it. the industry was opposed to any mandate that would force the parks or apartment complexes to build shelters. and oklahomans have a tendency to buck up any time you do say you have to do something. so often times when we're looking at legislation like this, we have to offer the carrot rather than the stick and provide incentives and it's unfortunate a lot of times when people are shopping they'd rather have a swimming pool than a storm shelter. in oklahoma , that's not the safe way to go.

>> why do you think that oklahoma voters might be more likely to support this idea if you put it to them directly when the lawmakers they have elected have not supported it?

>> it's just like a school bond issue. in oklahoma , we actually have a 60% requirement to pass a school bond issue. and when the citizens see something like that and they know it's going for the kids, often times they will turn out a 60% vote in favor of something like that. now, this constitutional amendment , this change would only require 50% vote of the people. and with the outcry of what i've heard from democrats and republicans alike and around the state , people are willing to look at something even if it means raising their taxes to provide that for the schools and protect our kids.

>> if you do get enough signatures, if you get this on the ballot, do you expect opposition? where do you think the opposition would come from?

>> i think there will be some opposition from individuals who feel like we're taxed enough already. we see some elements of the tea party that would fight any type of tax increase. the grover norquist crowd. they're very prominent in oklahoma and continue to fight any effort to raise revenue. i think this crosses the line there. i think you're going to see a lot of registered republicans join with a lot of the democrats and support something like this knowing that it is going for the common good.

>> joe dorman , it's been interesting to follow your efforts on this from afar as all of us in the country are trying to learn more about how your state copes with this kind of threat. thanks for helping us understand it. i appreciate your time.

>> you've got a lot of fans here in oklahoma . thank you for everything you do in reporting.

>> thanks for saying so. i really appreciate it.

>>> still to come, young guns . they get old too. then what happens? that's coming up.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2cd9d94e/l/0Lvideo0Bmsnbc0Bmsn0N0Cid0C5210A20A37/story01.htm

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