In today's environment, parents can't help but feel at least a tiny bit of worry when their child is at school. Two of the threats schoolchildren are exposed to are active shooters and tornadoes. In the face of these risks, Concord School District in Arkansas was looking for ways to better protect their students and staff, as currently widely adopted solutions have several shortcomings.
For example, in tornado-prone areas, such as the Midwest, most schools would either build a new building or repurpose a gym to act as a tornado shelter by reinforcing it structurally. Not only were these structures expensive to build, they were also hard to access in some cases. Tornadoes move very fast, and people sometimes only have a few minutes to get to safety before the tornado hits. Having the shelter in a separate building would mean having to move from one building to another, exposing students and staff to danger caused by strong winds. Furthermore, these tornado shelters offer little protection against active shooters and actually put more people at risk.
