Students raise concerns over safety plans

By Chrissy Braden
Staff Reporter

One year ago, Matt Klein was sitting in his apartment in Walker Hall of the Tom Brown-Pete Wright Residential Community when he heard commotion outside his front door. Residents of the residential community had been instructed to go to the basement of Walker Hall for shelter from a nearby tornado.

Klein, a senior speech communications major, said no one in the building warned him about the tornado and he wished TCU would do more to notify students of safety measures during a tornado.

Assistant director of facilities Richard Oliver, however, said each hall follows specific procedures to instruct residents to seek shelter in the interior part of the residence halls. He said there were no changes in TCU’s tornado policy after last year’s tornado.

Residence hall offices are all equipped with emergency Weather Service radio equipment, according to a Residential Services’ pamphlet, “Your Guide to Living On Campus.”

According to the pamphlet, hall directors are responsible for explaining the tornado alert signals and directing residents to designated shelters in their residence halls in the event of a tornado.

According to the pamphlet, residents are to go to the designated area without running or talking, and they are to keep calm and listen for instructions. Once in the designated area, they are to either sit with their head between their knees and hands covering their head or kneel with their hands covering their head.

But Klein said when he asked his residential assistant what the excitement in the hall was, he was told it would be a good idea to go to the basement.

Klein said he did not go to the basement because it was too crowded.

“There was no room for everyone down there,” Klein said. “People were spilling out (from the basement) into the stairwells and hall.”

Since there was no room in the basement, Klein said he stayed in his apartment and watched the weather from his window and television.

Joe Blosser, a senior religion and economics major and Clark Hall resident assistant, said there was plenty of room in the Clark Hall basement for the residents because the tornado was early in the evening.

He said Clark Hall has a larger basement than most of the other residence halls and can probably hold all of the residents for tornado protocols. But he said some residence hall basements could not shelter all of the residents in the hall.

“All of the halls have safety procedures,” Blosser said. “So even if everyone can’t fit in the basement, I’m pretty sure there is some safe location for them to be (during a tornado).”

Oliver said there are no spatial issues because although the basement may not hold all residents, there are other interior hallways that are considered weather safe. Oliver said he was satisfied with TCU’s policy, even after seeing it carried out last spring.

“Most people really react to severe weather,” Oliver said. “ When there’s a storm, everyone has a TV on.”

Klein said he never felt endangered at any point during the tornado, but would have felt safer if he knew TCU was doing more.
“TCU wasn’t that big of a help,” he said. “RA’s could have gone door-to-door to tell people.”

Klein also said TCU could use one of its television stations to relay tornado safety information and procedures.

“It would be nice to have an avenue to find out information,” he said. “Had I known that TCU was broadcasting weather information, I probably would have tuned in.”

Oliver said TCU does not have tornado drills and does not plan to have any in the future.

“We’ve discussed our plan with the National Weather Service and they think we’re doing what we should be,” Oliver said.

Chrissy Braden
l.c.braden@student.tcu.edu