South Alabama lags behind north in life-saving tornado shelters (al.com)
Updated Mar 8, 2019; Posted Mar 8, 2019
Last year, officials at the Lee County Emergency Management Agency asked Auburn University professor Philip Chaney to evaluate potential sites for the county’s first public storm shelter.
He and fellow investigator Christopher Burton identified 18 fire stations and one sports complex and drew a ring a mile wide around each, “like a cookie cutter,” Chaney said. Then they studied the communities inside those circles to figure out which would be at highest risk during major tornadoes.
Two locations rose to the top: Beauregard and Smiths Station. On Sunday, both took direct hits from the EF-4 that leveled dozens of homes and killed 23 people.
“The sites we picked were directly along the tornado path,” Chaney said. “I think this storm will really push them to complete this project.”
The Lee County Commission took no vote last June on the site of the new shelter – an early step in a process that funnels federal money to local communities for storm shelters. Millions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency has helped build hundreds of similar structures across Alabama, but it has been slow to reach areas in the southeast part of the state, including Beauregard.
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more: https://www.al.com/news/2019/03/south-alabama-lags-behind-north-in-life-saving-tornado-shelters.html