LITTLE AXE, Okla. – When it comes to staying safe in bad weather, many families rely on a warning and a storm shelter.
Texas Tech University puts storm shelters through a rigorous testing process to determine whether or not they will be able to withstand an EF-5.
Friday morning, Hide-Away Shelters and Little Axe Public Schools teamed up to do some additional testing of their own.
Tony Smith, the Little Axe superintendent, said, “We are demolishing the old middle school and we felt like this was a unique opportunity to kinda test this out a little bit further.”
The superintendent of Little Axe schools says he doesn’t want to see anything happen to his students like what happened in other districts last year.
He said, “My biggest concern is that we’re gonna be exposed to the same type of weather we’ve had the last few years and that they are happening earlier and earlier, when kids are still in school.”
So, Little Axe is coming up with a plan to install shelters within their schools to make sure their students are safe.
On Friday, they held a demonstration to see whether the shelter could withstand thousands of pounds of debris falling onto it.
With the help of a crane, the shelter was literally pounded by walls of bricks and smashed by falling metal beams before being inspected.
By the end of the test, the school was gone but the shelter still stood its ground.
In fact, there was not even a dent in the side.
While the test proved adequate enough to keep students safe, officials say they are continuing to look at other options.
