FEMA has given an $18 million emergency preparedness grant to the state of Missouri. Fair enough. Except that more than $10 million of it will go to build tornado shelters at five Kansas City Community Colleges. FEMA regional director Art Freeman justifies:

“We have spent a lot of time looking at our emergency-preparedness systems. The lessons learned from (hurricanes) Katrina and Wilma is that you can’t be overly prepared for a natural disaster. This level of preparedness will save many lives.”

Art wasn’t paying attention. The lesson from Hurricane Katrina is that throwing federal largesse at pork projects under the guise of “homeland security” doesn’t make us a damn bit safer. And make no mistake, this is a pork project.

First, tornadoes rarely strike urban areas, where warmer relative temperatures tend to keep them at bay.

Second, tornadoes are far more erratic than hurricanes. You can’t predict when or where they’ll pop up, or where they’ll go once they do. I’ve been through hundreds of tornado watches in my life, and probably several dozen tornado warnings. I’ve only been within a mile of a tornado a couple of times. The only people who will benefit from each $2 million shelter are the people who happen to be within running distance of them once a tornado touches down in the immediate area. But even that doesn’t make sense. If you’re close enough to a tornado to feel imperiled, you hit the deck. You find a basement, a door frame, or a ditch. You don’t hop in your car and head to the nearest shelter. The idea that people in the surrounding community are going to drive to the shelters once a tornado is spotted in the area as they do when a hurricane approaches is absurd.

In other words, these “safe rooms” will benefit only those people who happen to be in the buildings where they’re located at the precise time a tornado hits, and who know to take shelter in them. That’s a pretty small number.

Oh, and one other thing: There’s no record of any of the five campuses slotted for a “tornado shelter” ever being hit by an actual tornado.

Thanks to Brian Hipp for the pointer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 6:38 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.