By JOHN GAMBRELL
Associated Press writer
Just before the sirens sounded in Carlisle, school superintendent Floyd Marshall got the warning from police — a tornado was coming right for the town’s elementary and high school.
But unlike most other schools in Arkansas, the two Carlisle schools have specially designed interior hallways — dubbed tornado-safe rooms — where the district’s 750 students cowered until the storms passed by on May 2.
“It doesn’t take but the one time to devastate a community and families and if there’s a way to prevent that from occurring, then we need to make an effort to do it,” Marshall said. “You may never need it, but that one time that you do that you don’t have it, it’s something you can’t recover from.”
The National Weather Service said the Carlisle tornado last week had a path 2.6 miles long and was rated an E-F1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale from 0 to 5, meaning it had winds of 86-110 mph.
It veered away from the shared campus of the elementary and high schools at the last moment, but Gov. Mike Beebe acknowledged the importance of the rooms on a visit to the city Monday.
“School districts are making the conscious decision when they’re either renovating or doing new construction to go ahead and spend the money while they’re at it,” Beebe told reporters.
“I’d like to see them everywhere. I’d like to see them as much as possible. But at this juncture, we’re not in a position to mandate them everywhere, unless you have the money to be able to give them to everybody.”
Julie Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Education, acknowledged that many schools throughout the state do not have the safe rooms.
She said officials do not keep an official count of how many schools have them.
Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock confirmed Monday that damage in Conway, Van Buren and Cleburne counties was inflicted by a single tornado that they classified as an E-F3 with winds between 136 and 165 mph.
Lonoke County had 56 homes hit by the tornado. Of that, 13 were destroyed; nine had major damage, and 19 had minor damage.
Pulaski County had 75 homes hit. Of that total, 21 were destroyed; 16 had major damage, and 27 had minor damage. State law requires schools to hold tornado drills no less than four times per year.
