Photo By Chief Petty Officer Jose Jaen | 210303-N-VD165-001-- NAS JRB Fort Worth Child Development Center held a ribbon cutting...... read more read more
FORT WORTH, TX (Mar. 5, 2021) – The NAS JRB Fort Worth Child Development Center (CDC) held a ribbon cutting ceremony for their newly built storm shelter on Mar. 3 aboard the installation.
The CDC’s Child and Youth Program Director, Angela Noll, said prior to the construction of the storm shelter the CDC staff and children would have to walk, uncovered and exposed to the elements, to the base swimming pool facility and use their bathrooms as a modified storm shelter. “I have an amazing staff, they were able to take 200 children under the age of five, and get them from their classrooms to that shelter in under six minutes,” said Noll.
A group of parents that was invited to witness the previous evacuation plan said to Noll, “You guys are doing the best you can, but it is still not safe…we need something else.” Noll said parents began advocating at Captain’s Call, base town halls, and other forums to advocate for a properly built storm shelter. She continued that under the tenure of CAPT Mike Steffen, previous base Commanding Officer from Aug. 2015 to April 2017, the project really “caught traction and started moving.”
LT Nicholas D. Cruz, director of Facilities Engineering and Acquisitions Division for the NAS JRB Fort Worth Public Works Department, said the building includes 1,647 square feet of shelter space and custom-built restrooms for adults and children. “In an emergency, the shelter can fit approximately 750 people shoulder to shoulder and it is built to withstand an EF-5 rated tornado. After the groundbreaking on Feb. 17, 2020, construction took 374 days to complete,” Cruz said.
According to the National Weather Service website, the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF) is used to assign the estimated wind speed of a tornado. An EF-5 rated tornado maintains wind speeds over 200-miles-per-hour.
“We are only the second tornado shelter built in the Department of Defense,” said Noll, and “every little thing was considered in the design of this storm shelter.” Noll said that the rebar and concrete building materials used to construct the 18-inch-thick walls of the storm shelter sit atop piers rooted two-to-five feet in the ground. Built like a bunker, the building is heavily anchored, has storm grade windows, and a passive airflow system, in case the HVAC system malfunctions, which will allow air to flow throughout the shelter. Noll also said the shelter has soundproofing and a filtered water system installed for staff to mix formula to make bottles for babies. “It’s a tank,” she continued, “just an amazing facility.”
Noll said this storm shelter provides the “safety and mental well-being for our Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen to be able to go to work and do the jobs they need to do during those emergency situations knowing their children are taken care of. I am just delighted that we made it happen, that it is done, and we can use it to keep our kiddos safe,” said Noll.
The new shelter sits 15-feet behind the CDC building and is connected by a covered roof awning from the main CDC building to the shelter. “This now provides a covered, close, protective facility for (the children) to evacuate to at a moment’s notice,” said Cruz.
“We will be protected from the rain and hail—we evacuate the babies and cribs, now we don’t have to worry about them getting rained on,” said Noll. The shelter space, which can comfortably host 320 occupants at any given time, gives the children a place to play on raining days, continued Noll. “We’ve got a safe place that is quiet and warm. We have the ability to play movies in there and keep (the children) calm. For us, on a day-to-day bias, we are going to use (this shelter) on days when it gets too hot—as they do here in Texas—or on days when it is too cold to play outside,” said Noll. The kids can run around and ride bikes in the shelter, said Noll, but in the case of bad weather, “we now have a place to go long before the sirens start going off.”
| Date Taken: | 03.05.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 03.05.2021 18:29 |
| Story ID: | 390726 |
| Location: | FORT WORTH, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 125 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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