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New safety features will protect Alabama schools from tornadoes


(Image: WPMI) County School Tornado Wing
(Image: WPMI) County School Tornado Wing
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In the last week alone, twisters ripped through communities in Texas destroying several schools along the way. The same storm system that hit Dallas, Texas blew through our area Monday. The Gulf Coast had no damage, fortunately, as the system changed course.

In Baldwin County, and throughout Alabama, new safety features found in schools will now make a huge difference in keeping children and school staff safe.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at it, but the walls inside specially constructed hallways at Bay Minette Elementary are built to withstand a 15 pound two-by-four traveling at 100 miles an hour. The same walls have 12-inch-thick walls, a "Tornado Wing," with re-enforced concrete; enough to withstand a category five hurricane.

It's all part of Alabama's 2011 mandate requiring all new K- 12 school construction to have "mandatory safe spaces." The mandate came after 8 people died when a devastating tornado destroyed Enterprise High School in Southeast Alabama in 2007.

"In addition to the normal square footage that we pay there's a $75 per square foot expenditure to include the tornado shelter," said Anthony Sampson, who is in charge of school safety and prevention for Baldwin County schools.

"The new Belforest school will have it, the new Foley Elementary school as well as the new Orange Beach middle and high school," said Sampson.

Bay Minette Elementary is the first to showcase what's known at the "tornado wing," which can hold everyone in the school. The new school is planning its first drill two weeks from now.

"It’s going to look different than the plans that we've had in the past where kids come out in the hallway and find a room with no windows and shelter there, with us we're going to be coming to the tornado hall," said Principal Laura Moorer.

Principal Moorer, a Bay Minette native remembers the tornado of 1981. "And then we just all dropped to the floor and got under our desks," said Moorer. She was in the 8th grade when that tornado destroyed most of the old Bay Minette middle school. Today she says, "We've come a long way."

"To get a school that's fortified with the tornado shelter so that parents can rest assured that the kids are here that happens that they are going to be safe," said Moorer.

The average cost of these new tornado wings is about $500,000 for each new school. Older schools won't have the new tornado wings but they will still conduct monthly tornado drills.

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