Safe room erected on school campus with FEMA funds

— Massive concrete walls were erected on an extremely deep foundation. The gray structure which arose over the past couple of months behind the high school is a “safe room.”

Pea Ridge school superintendent Mike Van Dyke said the safe room was built for a storm shelter for the students of the Primary and Middle schools.

“Where I was in western Arkansas, they had been talking about them ... It’s good for the community and the school,” Van Dyke said, adding that he and Kathy Bannister, emergency management grant writer for Benton County, wrote the hazard mitigation grant.

“There was a lot of coordination done,” Van Dyke said. “It took quite a bit of time.”

Mayor Jackie Crabtree said he believes the safe room will be a community asset and he looks forward to working with Van Dyke on the use of it.

He said the project began two years ago as he worked with the Arkansas Department of Emergeny Management. “They coordinated in a state level,” Van Dyke said.

The safe room funding was splitthree ways. Seventy-five percent of the money came from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 12.5 percent was funded by the state Department of Emergency Management, and 12.5 percent from the school district. The local share was about $100,000, Van Dyke said. The entire project cost about $903,000.

The building, which is 5,000-square feet will hold 800 children and staff, Van Dyke said. The concrete structure is about 98- by 50-feet with 18-foot ceilings. It is designed to withstand winds of up to 250 miles per hour.

“The building is for the primary and middle school first,” he said, adding that high school students will go there if there is room.

Van Dyke said the door is designed to unlock when the Fire Department sounds the severe weather alert siren.

“It automatically opens by radio frequency,” he said, adding that the door will lock two hours later.

He said it is available to city residents after hours.

“I’m working with the city to see what we need to do,” he said.

Van Dyke said it may be used for community gatherings just asthe Ridge Rockers Square Dance group currently uses the intermediate school cafeteria.

“The building was built for the schol and the children of the school first. If there is a tornado during the day ... I don’t think there will be enough room for the community during the day,” he said. “The youngest are the most vulnerable. We looked at what we could afford to build with our budget.”

After hours, it will be up to the city to coordinate, he said, adding that anybody in the city - the mayor, the fire and police personnel - will probably have access to a kay.

Van Dyke said he believes his is the first school district in Benton County to construct a safe room, although he knows of several in Fort Smith and Van Buren.

“I though it was a way to build something the community could use using federal money. The match was low,” he said.

“I think it’s money well spent on the safety of the children and the people of the community,” Van Dyke concluded.

“You could use it for classroom space if you had to, but we don’t have that problem right now,” he said, adding that there are no parameters or restrictions imposed by FEMA on use of the building.

News, Pages 1 on 02/02/2011