It's a bulldozer, and it's turning ground outside the elementary school in preparation for a new safe room — Diamond, Mo.'s first official community storm shelter.
"If we could do something about it, then let's do it," Superintendent Mike Mabe said of his school district's proposal to try to maximize safety in case of severe weather. "It's just the right thing to do."
Diamond is not alone; many local school districts have spent the past three and a half years working to add safe rooms to their schools. Officials say it's largely a result of the destruction of the May 2011 tornado, which killed 161 people in Joplin and Duquesne and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, dozens of churches and nearly a dozen school buildings, including Joplin High School. Even districts that were already planning to build safe rooms at the time the tornado hit said the storm served as a catalyst for putting their plans into motion to try to prevent another devastating catastrophe.
When local school districts' current and proposed construction projects are completed, more than 40,000 students, staff and community members across Southwest Missouri and Southeast Kansas will have access to a safe place to go during severe weather, according to a Globe analysis based on projected maximum occupancy rates of the shelters.
More than $100 million will have been poured into these projects, with a portion of those costs being paid with federal funds.
School districts including Joplin, Webb City and Jasper in Missouri and Galena and Baxter Springs in Kansas each have built at least one community safe room since the 2011 tornado. In many other districts, such as Neosho, Diamond, Carthage and Avilla, construction crews are working feverishly to get safe rooms built. Districts including Seneca and Carl Junction are working to get their safe room projects started.
The Riverton, Kansas, School District recently decided to put a bond issue before voters in April that could lead to the construction of storm shelters as the district expands its building complex.
“The Joplin tornado woke a lot of people up,” Todd Berry, Riverton superintendent, recently told The Globe, adding the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado also got people’s attention. Unlike Joplin's tornado, which hit on a Sunday night, Moore's 2013 tornado struck an elementary school when classes were in session, causing the deaths of seven students.
Preparing for Storm Season
Following the devastation of the Joplin tornado, district officials say they want to be prepared for the next major tornado that might hit this area.
And based on historical data, another big storm is likely to hit this region of the United States at some point. Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma see an average combined 203 tornadoes each year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of those, an average of two to three per state each year are strong to violent tornadoes, rating at least a 3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale.
The Joplin metropolitan area of Jasper and Newton counties has been hit by more than 80 tornadoes since 1950.
The availability of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for tornado-mitigation projects after the 2011 storm, which was rated an EF-5 tornado and was one of the deadliest in decades, spurred many local school districts into action.
Nowhere has safe room construction been more evident than in Joplin, where 10 community shelters have opened over the course of the past year and another four shelters are set to open later this year.
The safe rooms are used as gymnasiums during the school day and are monitored by teams of volunteers during non-school hours. The district has seen a "good response" from the public during inclement weather, with safe rooms in the more heavily populated neighborhoods drawing 100 to 150 people at times, said Jim Hounschell, director of safety and security.
"Most everybody in this community was affected in one way or another by the tornado, and where they may not have taken it as seriously before when we had bad weather come through, I think it just shows that everybody is certainly taking it seriously and relieved that they have places where they can go," he said.
Among the newest projects to open in Joplin were safe rooms at Kelsey Norman and Royal Heights elementary schools last week. Kay Johnson, the secretary at Kelsey Norman and the grandmother of a pupil who attends school there, said she thinks the shelter will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood.
"I want people to feel safe because there was a long time where we didn't," said Johnson, who also will serve on a team of volunteers that will monitor the safe room when it is in use. "I know people in this community are going to come here."
Julie Munn, the principal of Kelsey Norman, said students and staff have already run through a tornado drill to prepare for storm season. While many students tend to be nervous or anxious during tornado drills, Munn said most of her pupils were calm and at ease during the first drill in the new safe room.
"When we came in here, they got the feeling that they were safe," she said.
Safe Rooms Beyond Joplin
The 2011 tornado was enough of a scare for Diamond that talks of a safe room for that community surfaced soon afterward. Eleven miles of farmland and houses in the school district's boundaries were damaged by the 2011 tornado after it moved east from Joplin, said Mabe, the district superintendent.
Mabe also said the images that came from Joplin High School surveillance cameras, which showed the hallways becoming a dangerous vortex of swirling debris in the high winds, prompted district officials to think about safe rooms — particularly because a school's hallways had typically been identified as the place of refuge during tornadoes.
"Obviously, the tornado really had districts rethink their safety protocol," he said.
As a result, the district broke ground this month for a community safe room that will be built onto the elementary school thanks to a voter-approved $3 million bond issue. It will also double as a multi-purpose room, cafeteria, nurse's station and storage space for the school, which desperately needed an expansion.
"We're so anxious to get it," said Eddie Jones, the district's maintenance director. "I think a lot of people are like, 'When is this going to open?'"
In Neosho, district officials took advantage of federal funds after the 2011 tornado to formulate an $8.8 million project that is putting community safe rooms at two elementary schools and the high school, said Tim Crawley, assistant superintendent of business and finance. All are anticipated to be completed this spring, he said.
"We overbuilt all three of our (safe rooms) for the purpose that we felt like there weren't a lot of areas for people in this community" to seek shelter during a tornado, he said. "We wanted to make sure that in a similar situation (to the Joplin tornado) that there was protection."
The Webb City School District last week celebrated the grand opening of its dome-shaped storm shelter, which can hold about 3,000 people. Construction crews plan to break ground soon at Carterville Elementary School, where another shelter will be built.
Tenth-grader Ady Ansley said that while she's excited to be among the first cheerleaders to perform in the dome, she's also relieved that the shelter will be open to the community.
"I live really close, so it's really reassuring to have somewhere to go," Ansley said.
The Galena (Kansas) School District has completed an expansion project that includes hardened space for use as community safe rooms. Superintendent Brian Smith said the shelters can hold more than 1,400 people — "everybody on our campus and then some," he said.
And the Wyandotte (Oklahoma) School District is building a safe room that will hold 650 people, be open to the community and double as a cafeteria during the school day. Ground has been broken, and construction crews hope to begin pouring the slab next week, Superintendent Troy Gray said.
"It just makes sense with all the storms, and we've had one (tornado) touch down within a mile of the school," he said. "Joplin's been hit; Moore has been hit — it's huge. There's nothing more important than the safety of our kids."
Globe staff writer Katie Lamb contributed to this report.
©2015 The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
