Earlier this year, FEMA and the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management collaborated on a series of training seminars to help architects, engineers 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 useable tools for the understanding, evaluation and design of better and safer protected areas within schools.

The first portion of the workshop focused on the general characteristics of tornados and provided detailed information on the effects and hazards of high-wind situations. Wind both pulls and pushes on buildings and even the lowest scaled tornados have wind speeds exceeding many of the design and construction standards for withstanding stress conditions. Roof uplift, building collapse and building envelope penetration are just a few of the devastating effects that can occur and are typical in these high-wind conditions, leaving any occupants inside exposed and very vulnerable.

With no previous requirement or mandate to provide established safe areas within schools, there are thousands of existing schools across all states with little or no protection to withstand these extreme forces. FEMA defines five levels of protection for weather related emergencies and most schools currently are at the lowest level, which includes a basic tornado refuge area selected by school personnel to be safe. A clear and consistent method of assessing and evaluating existing schools was developed and shared during the workshop to be used by design professionals and acted upon by each school to raise their level of protection.

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 actual 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 the protection level to a hardened room or area.

These second and third levels of protection defined by FEMA substantially improve the safety levels in any school that has previously not been assessed. The highest two levels of protection, either an actual storm shelter or a safe room, require an even greater degree of evaluation and design and must meet building code and FEMA standards. The third section of Safe Schools 101 focused on the design and construction standards of these two levels of protection, including the governing documents associated with each of them.

A storm shelter meets the guidelines established in ICC 500 and provides “life safety protection” from wind events. A safe room is an area meeting FEMA 361 standards and provides “near absolute protection” from wind events, the fifth and highest level of protection. This is the only standard of protection where occupants should have a very high probability of protection from injury or death during a tornado event.

Unfortunately, very few schools have a full FEMA safe room or even an ICC 500 storm shelter. Only Alabama currently mandates providing a storm shelter in every new school. Oklahoma has a goal to assess every school in the state but does not require safe rooms or storm shelters to be built in new schools. The upcoming 2015 IBC will incorporate the standards of ICC 500 and require areas of the country to provide storm shelters in certain types of new buildings, including schools, but will be dependent upon local adoption by governing agencies. To this date, the decisions on what type of protection schools should have has been left to local governing bodies rather than mandates from state or national groups, causing some confusion on what level of protection is necessary.

Money and funding of course are the prime factors in many local jurisdictions when it comes to moving forward with increasing the protection level within a school. Whether a school needs to be retrofitted with additional protections or an area in a new school upgraded to meet storm shelter or safe room standards, there is a cost to this work and it is typically higher than typical construction costs.

Some money has been and is available from FEMA, the state or other agencies, but in many cases the process to get the money is difficult and does not cover to the total amount needed. Some private money has been available in specific cases, but the majority of the costs have come from local bond elections. In many communities, this money is just not available, leading to the funding issue for improvements being a hot topic in many states.

The final portion of the Safe Schools 101 workshop was an actual assessment of a local school in the Oklahoma City area. This took place on the Saturday following the two-day classroom work and through the different sessions of the workshop, over thirty schools were evaluated with recommendations presented to FEMA and ODEM officials and to personnel from each of the schools assessed. The workshop overall was an invaluable opportunity to obtain better information and new skills to help schools with this challenging issue.

Just in Oklahoma, there are more than 1,000 schools still to be assessed, so there is a long path to travel in making sure all communities have safe and protected schools from tornadoes and other extreme weather conditions. FEMA is working with Texas to possibly start a Safe Schools 101 program, and other states are having discussions on how they will proceed with this important safety issue affecting all schools. Over the next few years there should be quite a few changes in how schools need to approach this issue, giving architects a chance to lead and become a valuable resource to the schools through their expertise and vision.

Doug Koehne, AIA is the director of K-12 Planning for KSQ Architects in the firm’s Dallas office. He has worked almost exclusively on educational and community-based public projects for 20 years, during which time he has completed school projects throughout the state of Texas.

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The approximately $23 million contract will charge the partnership with overseeing the $1.8 billion master plan, funded by FEMA, for the community. Since funding began for the revitalization efforts, there have been six new elementary schools constructed and three elementary schools have undergone significant renovations. But there is still an enormous need for more facilities, according to Lona Edwards Hankins, executive director of major capital projects.

“We are still recovering from the damage that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many of these were built before WWII,” she said. “We have many buildings operating that were built between 1920 and 1940 and at least one that is over 160 years old.”

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in the summer of 2005, approximately 110 of the 126 schools in the city were either completely destroyed or severely damaged. The master plan, a joint effort between the Recovery School District and the Orleans Parish School board, aims to bring thriving schools to the wounded city and change the educational climate in New Orleans.

“A program of this size and complexity has multiple challenges,” Hankins said. “The largest one we have is balancing the demand by the community to quickly deliver these schools and to keep cost under control, to ensure that we are not competing against ourselves for good general contractors in a market that had minimal construction occurring prior to Katrina.”

The Jacobs/CSRS partnership will provide project and construction management, including Disaster Recovery Services which administer funding reimbursements from FEMA and the Community Development Block Grant. The Orleans Parish School board also holds a contract with Jacobs/CSRS of about $8 million.

Of the 10 firms that applied for the contract, Skanska, headquartered in Sweden, and Vanir Heery, comprised of Sacramento, Calif.-headquarterd Vanir Construction Management Inc. and Heery International, with offices in New Orleans, were also finalists that interviewed with the five-seat selection committee. This will be the third time the district renews its contract with the Jacobs/CSRS partnership, which has been managing projects of the master plan since 2007.

“This was done after a highly competitive process where eight firms were scored,” Hankins said. “The selection committee felt they were best suited to complete the final phase of the adopted School Facilities Master Plan for Orleans Parish.”

The master plan is updated every two years in order to accommodate any changes in population. The next update is due this July. However, officials are hoping this will be the final contract needed in order to bring a transformed school system to the city by 2016 with 80 new buildings.

But along with new school buildings, the schools are also implementing new spaces and tech-friendly features. Along with incorporating multipurpose areas, such as the Convocation Center at Carver High School, new plans also include flexible interconnecting black box theaters, band rooms and choir rooms, Hankins said. New modern facilities will also support digital learning and teaching strategies.

“We are accommodating the trends in education to move toward blended learning, wireless access and electronic white boards,” Hankins said.

Little Woods, Colton and Frantz Elementary schools will be opening this summer while Drew Elementary, Sophie B Wright High School and McDonogh 42 are undergoing renovations. Eight new schools in the district will also be in construction this year and seven schools are currently in the design phase.
 

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