Creating a Safe Space
Peak tornado season in Arkansas typically stretches between May to early June, but these natural disasters can occur any time of year if the weather conditions are right.
In 2023 alone, 30 tornadoes hit the southern U.S. state—nine tornadoes touched down in March and six occurred in January and June, according to the National Weather Service. While these storms can cause major destruction and physical harm, they also disrupt the school day.
When a tornado watch is issued, school administrators, teachers, and staff know to be prepared to seek shelter once that watch turns into a tornado warning—meaning a tornado has been sighted or detected by weather radar. Some schools have a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved shelter to move students, teachers, and staff into when a tornado warning is issued. But at many others, students seek shelter in interior hallways, bathrooms, and other safe spaces that limit exposure to glass and potential flying debris should a tornado whip through.
This was the procedure in the Quitman School District—a rural Arkansas school district with two main buildings for kindergarten through 12th grade students—when Dennis Truxler became superintendent in July 2014. Initially, he says he worked to get a FEMA grant to build standalone safe rooms to shelter students and approximately 90 staff members at the district’s facilities. But the grant never materialized, something Truxler now says he’s thankful for.
“I’m glad I didn’t get that grant because what we have now is much better protection,” he adds. “And you don’t have to relocate. There are a lot of advantages to it, and it has ballistics, so you have protection from a shooter.”
Two Problems, One Solution
It started with a simple Google search in 2018. After seeing a story about a school in nearby Oklahoma installing a tornado-proof structure in a classroom, Truxler decided to search on his browser for “tornado shelters in the classroom.” One of the first results to pop up was for National Safety Shelters in Florida, which sells a saferoom solution that’s marketed as being tornado- and bulletproof.
As a school security administrator worried both about the potential harm natural disasters and active shooters pose to those in his care, Truxler was immediately interested. He called the Florida company and was connected with Sarah Corrado, one of the owners, who explained that their system was manufactured in Harrisonville, Missouri, just a few hours’ drive from Truxler’s district.
So, Truxler took a road trip to visit the manufacturing plant and meet the makers behind the technology, which uses ballistic level-three steel to shield occupants from harm from handgun, shotgun, and high-powered semi-automatic rifle rounds.
“The thing that really impressed me was the owner, Mike Vogt, how passionate he was about providing safety for anyone—especially school districts and students and staff,” Truxler says. “The process they went through, and the time they took, to make sure the product they manufactured was going to be absolutely something that saved lives, whether it be a tornado or active shooter.”
For instance, the shelters are made with quarter-inch military-grade steel and available with bulletproof windows. They have been impact tested at the National Wind Institute at Texas Tech University, carry the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Steel Certification, and meet FEMA 320/361 and ICC 500 guidelines for storm shelters.
After visiting the plant, Truxler went back to Quitman and leaned on his construction background to assess the number of shelter units he would need to order to place shelters in every classroom, cafeteria, library, and gymnasium in the district. He sent his estimates to the National Safety Shelter team, which worked with Truxler to check his work and then sent him a quote: $989,000 for delivery and installation for the entire campus.
The district had access to about $1.4 million in a building fund, so Truxler put together a quick financial presentation for the school board and requested a special meeting with the five members to discuss purchasing the shelter solution.
“I just showed them how we could afford to make this purchase,” Truxler recalls. “My hope was that they would take this information and think about it, come back to our regular board meeting, and approve it.”
But the board was also extremely interested in the solution. It decided to vote in that special meeting and unanimously approved the purchase. The next day, Truxler set in motion signing the contract, putting down a downpayment, and making the initial order, which was delivered three months later.
Installation and Training
Initially, some teachers were skeptical of the solution and concerned that it would take up too much space in their classrooms. But Truxler was able to dissuade those fears by emphasizing that in a kindergarten classroom, for example, the solution would take up about 28 square feet of a 900-square-foot room. Teachers would also be able to decorate the powder-coated exteriors of the shelters using magnets.
School was in session at the time of delivery, so the installers would arrive on Friday afternoons to put the shelters in during the weekend—limiting classroom disruptions. Facilities in the district are located on the ground floor with a concrete pad that is at least four inches thick, so the shelters can be bolted directly into the floor. This prevents them from being dislodged by windspeeds up to 200 miles per hour—the speed of an EF-5 tornado.
Installations started with the kindergarten classrooms, moving their way up by grade across the facility. The entire process took approximately six months.
The shelter solution is virtually maintenance free, Truxler says. The only repair they have made since installation is replacing some of the handles that are used to open the shelters’ doors.
“I’ve had to replace some of those from the movement of furniture during the summer to get the floors waxed,” Truxler says. “The lowest ones, some of them have been bent. Mike sent me a whole box of replacements.”
Now when a tornado warning is issued, administrators will make an announcement over the school’s intercom system to move into the shelters—a process that typically takes 32 seconds to complete—to wait until the storm passes. The previous process of sheltering students in interior hallways typically took several minutes.
In the event of an active shooter, the district follows a similar process except teachers and staff are instructed to use a locking mechanism inside the shelter that prevents someone outside the shelter from opening it.
The district practices these techniques in tornado drills, but Truxler says they do not announce that they are conducting active shooter drills since “a lot of kids, students, are traumatized by active shooter drills because it makes them worry about it.” Instead, the district just focuses on practicing getting into the shelters in response to a weather emergency since both responses use the same process. Teachers are simply told to use the lock mechanism when sheltering for an active shooter threat.
After installing the solution, Truxler says the feedback from students, parents, and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive. He also attributes the solution to creating a safe school culture that attracts talented teachers and students to the district.
“When we installed these, we had around 640 students,” Truxler says. “…since the word has gotten out, we ended this year around 866…we’re fixing to be over 900. And a lot of that is because we’ve had excellent teachers who apply to come work here and bring their children. We’ve had families that have moved here, and filed for legal choice, and a lot of those who have come, come here for the safety.”
For more information on National Safety Shelters, visit nationalsafetyshelters.com or call 1-866-372-1530.
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