Tornadoes in the Midwest?

By Audrey Treece

We spend a great deal of time at Southern Illinois University Carbondale dealing with projects where the site is located in the Midwest. Actually, every project I have ever designed for academia, including my thesis, has been located in the Midwest. When you are born and raised here you often forget about the little things that become habitual in your daily lives. We were all heartbroken over the most recent Harrisburg tornado; however, I have to admit, I was not shocked in the least. After all of the activity that last spring brought us, it has just become a part of life.

I have been working diligently on my thesis project, which, again, is the Early Childhood Center located in O’Fallon, Missouri, and recently one of my committee members brought up the aspect of tornadoes and how I was accommodating their likely presence. I was totally thrown off guard…I had never thought about it. Okay, I have definitely thought about it, but it most definitely was not incorporated in any of my past projects.

Ironically, the day after this was brought to my attention, my work hosted a luncheon and the topic was tornadoes in school design. Our firm had a very in depth conversation, since a large majority of our clientele is education, on how we can begin to accommodate this underdeveloped need.

Before our conversation, my boss presented us with video from the devastating tornadoes from last spring that hit Joplin, Missouri. The video is comprised of live security camera footage that survived the wind and debris within the local high school. The video is evidence that not only do we need to begin thinking about tornado safety but we also need to start redefining our design.

The video can do a much better job than I could ever imagine to communicate the devastation that Joplin’s children would have been through had the tornado struck during school hours. I can almost guarantee that you will be as shocked as I was and I recommend you take a look and start thinking about what we can do, as designers, to solve this problem.

Video can be found at the bottom of this website:
http://archrecord.construction.com/features/humanitariandesign/united-states/Joplin-High-School.asp
Cheers!