District works on safe-room funding

District works on safe-room funding

BY LILY ABROMEIT | MAY 07, 2014 5:00 AM

Funding to fight against tornados and other severe weather didnt quite reach the Iowa City School District this year.

State officials are making an effort to increase the number of safe rooms available at school districts in Iowa, but Iowa City is lacking when it comes to available facilities. Schools in Cedar Rapids, Anamosa, and West Des Moines have safe rooms in their schools.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency website, a safe room is a hardened structure specifically designed to meet the FEMA criteria and provide near-absolute protection in extreme weather events, including tornadoes and hurricanes.

We applied for two safe rooms, [but] we did not get those grants, so at this time we do not have any safe rooms as defined by the FEMA guidelines, said school Superintendent Steve Murley.

The Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has allocated 40 safe-room projects in Iowa, Stefanie Bond, the public information officer for the department, wrote in an email.

Of those projects, 32 have been completed and eight are in progress, she said. There may be other safe rooms that have been built at other Iowa schools that we do not know about or that have been built that do not meet FEMA specifications.

The districts applications went through FEMA.

Murley said the district applied for the rooms to be part of design plans for Twain and Penn Elementary Schools.

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District works on safe-room funding