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MAN ON A MISSION
Assistant Superintendent of Facilities Charley Branham said student safety
is always a top priority for the district. “We think about a safe room every time
we practice a drill or build a facility. Where is the safest place to go with our
children?”
Branham still asks himself this question with every drill and each construction
project, but after 2011 he now puts on a different “hat” when he asks ‘where is
the safest place to go with our children?’
Constructing a safe room in the Lincoln County R-III School District became a
personal mission of the assistant superintendent when a tornado hit too close
to home. It wasn’t too close to his home in the community. The tornado that
changed Branham’s perspective was 500 miles away in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
His daughter, Jackie, survived an E4 tornado in the spring of 2011 while
attending the University of Alabama. Fortunately, she hid with her softball
team in the basement of the university’s coliseum. “The eye of the tornado hit
900 feet away from her, but the coliseum was a safe room,” Branham said. In
the aftermath, his daughter’s phone calls home were increasingly intense as
she realized the devastation in Tuscaloosa.
Now, Troy Buchanan High School and the community could potentially
benefit from Branham’s personal experience. In May 2014, Missouri Governor
Jay Nixon backed the Lincoln County R-III School District in a grant application
to construct a safe room on the Troy Buchanan High School campus. The
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hazard mitigation
grant is a 75-25 matching grant. The R-III District’s portion would be 25% to
construct a safe room along Highway 61 capable of withstanding winds
of up to 250 miles per hour.
If approved, the FEMA matching grant would construct a 12,600 square
foot facility that would house 1,800 people. Branham said the TBHS safe room
proposal was one of three submitted on behalf of the Lincoln County R-III
School District.
In the past 50 years,
Lincoln County has
experienced 21 tornadoes
14-inch pre-cast
concrete walls
designed to withstand
250 mph winds
Joplin tornado – 14
minutes in length, left
14,000 people homeless,
161 people killed, more
than 1,000 people went
to the hospital
114
Small enough to know you but
strong enough to serve you!
320 Main Street •