plaza towers, kids don t feel safe. i m afraid that they ve lost the trust. and that they ve lost the security that we had before may 20th. how do you rebuild that trust? i don t know the answer to that. and i m not a principal or superintendent. that being said, i will say, superintendent romine, the new superintendent of moore schools, has reached out to us, and been just wonderful with trying to work with us, in the future, to get make sure that he has shelters in every one of these schools that he oversees. you ve estimated that the price tag to put shelters in the more than 1,600 schools in oklahoma will probably be upwards of $1 billion. how do you pay for that? well, again, i don t have all the answers. what i do know is it s going to take a tremendous amount of money. we are not a political organization. we are a private organization
enrolled them in the only school in moore that currently has a storm shelter. a nonprofit group called shelter oklahoma schools, s.o.s. they re trying to build tornado proof shelters in every school in the state. john hunt started shelter oklahoma schools. john, good to see you. thank you, craig. not fair to say i did it alone, but i was certainly integral in the process. on friday, students in moore returned to a new but temporary plaza towers elementary. but this building also does not have a storm shelter. why not? i m unable to answer that question. we are not about looking towards the past, we are about looking towards the future. so we are a private group that haes come together to try to raise as much money as possible over all of the ensuing years, and let s do everything we can to get a shelter in every school that does not have one. at the root of this, according to the principal, at
safe rooms that were in that community in the path of that tornado. turns out they all held. it turns out that if you had somewhere to go, if you had a safe room to take shelter in from that ef-5 tornado that hit moore, oklahoma, then that safe room really did protect you. they found 16 of them, these specifically built, specifically re-enforced safe rooms in the path of destruction in moore. the scientists from texas tech who investigated how they all faired in the storm said, quote, they all performed great. the oklahoma newspaper reports that in some cases the safe rooms were the only part of the house that made it through that tornado. but they made it. they worked. after that devastating tornado in moore, a state lawmaker down the road in rush springs, oklahoma, decided to do something about safe rooms. lawmaker joe dorman has been trying to pass laws about storm safety in oklahoma for a few years now. but he is a democrat and the
students at a vocational school in the path of the huge storm managed to get underground before that funnel cloud destroyed their building. now the superintendent of that school says that any rebuilding he does is going to include some kind of safe room. quote, when you see the devastation and you see the end result, it clears up for you pretty quick. the death toll so far from that tornado outbreak on friday is 18 people dead. but everybody at that vo-tech school lived because they had an underground shelter to get to. with back to back tragedies like this in her state, mary fallin says oklahoma must have a vigorous discussion about providing safe places for schools. about what the state can do, she says, quote, within budgetary means. budgetary means, of course, depend largely on the decisions of the elected officials of oklahoma who, after all, pass a budget and set taxes to pay for it and sign those budgetary
well, joe dorman, the same state lawmaker who has tried for years now to get something done on storm safety who tried again just last month, now he says he plans to try to go around the legislature. he plans to try to gather signatures for a citizens initiative in oklahoma. he plans to put this policy question about storm shelters directly to the people. he says he believes they will do and they can do what the legislature will not and apparently cannot. joining us now is joe dorman, a state representative from oklahoma, he hopes to establish $500 million bond for safe rooms in 2014. thank you very much for being with us tonight. good evening, rachel. thank you for having me. you know this issue a lot better than i do. i feel like i m learning it day by day. did i say anything screwy about this policy idea and how these shelters have performed in the past? no, you re on target. the shelters have been proven to provide that safe mechanism for people to have a place to go during a