By Regina Butler
Pontotoc Progress
PONTOTOC – After years of hoping and looking for monies to provide schools with a safe place to go in the event of a tornado, Pontotoc County Emergency Management Director Rickey Jaggers said monies have been approved by FEMA for tornado shelters to be built at the North Pontotoc and the South Pontotoc campuses.
And what’s even better about these shelters is the cost to the school system, only 10 percent of the total.
“They will look similar to the one at Smithville,” Jaggers said.
“They will be round dome buildings that are 116 feet in diameter. They are 10,563 square feet and will hold 1,827 people.”
The buildings will withstand 225 mph winds, the equivalent of an EF5 tornado.
Jaggers said total cost of the buildings will be $1,840,000 for each shelter.
“It is wheel chair accessible and there is storage space and of course restrooms in it.”
Pontotoc County School Superintendent Kenny Roye said he is pleased with the having a safe place for the students to go.
“This means we don’t have to make a decision about letting school out,” he said.
Another plus that the superintendent sees is the extra space it will generate for the schools.
“We can use the shelter as a gym or activity building and that will free up our activity buildings at the schools for us to put in additional classrooms.”
The state portion of the cost comes from mitigation funds left in the state coffers from previous disasters. More than a year in the planning, last year Mississippi Emergency Management Director Robert Latham told the county EMA directors that he wanted these monies to be used to help schools get shelters.
“I drew up some numbers and asked both city and county school superintendents if they wanted to participate,” Jaggers said.
“At that time, we didn’t know if the match would be 75/25 or what. I knew it could be up to 25 percent that the school districts would have to pay. We had a short window of time to reply especially since all the districts in the state were clamoring for the monies”
City school leaders opted out, but county school leaders decided to go ahead with the plans.
As it turned out, once the monies were released, the county school only has to pay 10 percent of the total cost of building the storm shelters.
“The people at Three Rivers Planning and Development did a lot of leg work and helped write the grant application exactly right. The folks at FEMA were impressed,” Jaggers said.
regina.butler@journalinc.com