Posted on 05/21/2013 6:58:39 AM PDT by Biggirl
MOORE, Okla. (CBS Houston/AP) — Search and rescue crews worked through the night after a monstrous tornado barreled through the Oklahoma City suburbs, demolishing an elementary school and reducing homes to piles of splintered wood. At least 24 people were killed and and that number is expected to climb, officials said Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at houston.cbslocal.com ...
“I can’t imagine there was a basement. Modern schools don’t have basements.”
Midwest schools in storm areas have basements. I lives in Dayton for awhile and the school had a basement specifically for tornadoes. No water mains, heavy ceiling, etc.
OMG — How horrible. e used to be ushered down into the basement for bombing drills during WWII. This was an old, brick school (now illegal in CA because of earthquake hazards). I can’t imagine that that rickety old school would have protected us much, especially since the walls were lined with tall bookshelves that stored all of the out of season books.
The children sat on the floor in front of the dusty old bookshelves with our arms around our knees and heads down. I can just imagine all the books tumbling down at the first shock wave, and then the shelves toppling over on the kids.
Responsibility2nd: “To go home only to be killed or injured as that F5 ripped the house apart?”
That is the parent’s decision to make, not the schools.
If you don’t live here, you don’t probably understand exactly how accurate tornado tracking is in Oklahoma City. We were about 2 miles from it and watched it as it went past. Why didn’t we run to shelter? Because the news was reporting its exact location (confirmed by our own observations).
Unless one is right in the path of these things, the risk of injury or destruction is virtually nil. With as accurate as the news is, it’s possible to simply drive a mile or two out of the tornado’s path. Although that’s not wise in most cases, it’s probably better than trying to hunker down in a structure that’s directly in the path of a F-5 tornado.
Bottom line: parents should have the ultimate authority and responsibility for their children. It’s their decision to make.
News stories all over Australia about that tornado. A question: It was reported that 24 children were killed but no mention of school staff. Were they there?
I heard on the news this morning that students (high school, I’m thinking) were sheltered into the locker rooms just before the storm hit. Some quick thinking individual thought about the football helmets. So as the debris started flying, at least these helmets were used for some protection.
I don’t want to second guess anyone on this tradegdy but, I was told that they had 15 minutes warning. If you watch the video of the strom approaching the High School and if the Elementry school had the same busses as did the High School, You can see the busses sitting there and the twister aooroaching @ I think they said 2.5 mph! there is no damage as of yet and hi-ways not blocked, those busses should have been loaded and out to anywhere perpendicular of the storm! the Storm was 2 miles wide. Even @ only 10 miles an hour the busses could have been out of harms way and you know the driver would have been doin max! That would have been my option!
A lot of people here have shelters that simply cannot be destroyed by an F-5. You may be buried under rubble, but you aren’t going to die. There are several underground shelters on my block alone. The schools here should have similar safe rooms or shelters that are designed to handle direct hits. I believe both of the demolished schools were relatively new, so they could have been built to protect the children.
I think that’s part of the reason why some parents are so infuriated that the children weren’t released to their parents when it was still safe to do so. From what I understand, some parents actually went to the school, asked for their children, and were turned away (this will need to be confirmed—it’s rumor right now). The parents may have had much better shelters than the school. Like I wrote, in ground shelters are very common in homes here.
Some parents were going to the school to pick up their kids and leave the area entirely -- not to return home.
It seemed to vary a lot in intensity. At some points, it looked very similar to the May 3rd tornado. It may have reached F-5 at certain points. Unfortunately, the damage seems worse, because a lot of new buildings have went up in Moore since 1999.
You don’t build basements in OK. There is a reason very few houses have them and those are typically from the 50’s and 60’s and were built to be fallout shelters. The soil makes it extremely difficult. The soil is hard and no matter how well you build the basement, it will eventually leak.
The only way to survive that tornado was to be out of its path or below ground. Below ground is not an option for schools. Because of the timing of the storm and the heavy population where it went through, evacuation was not a good option either. It was only about 30 minutes from clear skies to the tornado sirens going off. In OK, once the sirens go off, schools go on lockdown.
There was only a 50% chance of severe weather yesterday that could possibly produce a tornado. If we closed schools every time that was the forecast, they might as well close school down in mid April for the summer. This was a simply a combination of worst case scenarios.
Wrong. As someone else upthread pointed out - there was no time to send for the busses and no point to send kids to an empty home.
You claim this was the parents decision, not the schools. Wrong again. This was an urgent split-second decision. And as long as the children are at school, the responsibility for their safety belongs to the school staff. Certainly if a parent showed up before the tornado to take little Billy home, then fine. But since the kids and their parents had no choice, then I appreicate the decisions officials made.
I’m guessing that more little lives would have been lost if these hundreds of children were just “sent home”.
Trust me. You can not move 500 children in 15 minutes.
Why would you say “below ground is not an option for schools?” They could build rows of in-ground shelters on the school grounds that are separate from the main building. For younger children that can’t be expected to evacuate safely in rain to external shelters, there could be individual shelters in the classrooms themselves. They could be something similar to ones used in garages.
You can’t move 500 adults under those conditions in 15 minutes.
I’m not talking about busing the children mere minutes before it hit. I’m talking about parents who showed up early, wanted to evacuate their children, and were told no. Again. Schools do not own the children. Parents bear ultimate responsibility and therefore must have ultimate authority for their own children. Schools do not have the right to keep me from my children!
Never knew.
I’m sure that is a correct statement but I would have moved as many as I could have.
You live in OK?
Responsiblity2nd: “Trust me. You can not move 500 children in 15 minutes.”
You are right, but I’m not talking about last minute evacuations or split second decisions. I’m talking about 15 - 30 minutes (or more) before it hit which is plenty of time to release individual students on a case-by-case basis.
As for trying to bus them all out at the last moment, I agree that’s ridiculous. At that point, the best choice is to hunker down and try to ride it out.
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