Texoma is no stranger to natural disasters. Floods, drought, and pestilence have all left their calling card. They, however, are minor in comparison to the terror and destruction wrought by the ever present tornado. In the middle of the sixties, an unwelcome cyclone made its way through northern Wichita Falls giving the city a taste of what was to come on April 10, 1979 - Terrible Tuesday.

Our families along with thousands of residents of Wichita Falls spent those terror filled minutes in our bathtubs, closets, halls and some unfortunate ones in automobiles and ditches as the storm laid waste to a major portion of the city.

Nearly 50 lives were lost, hundreds injured, thousands homeless. We dug out, began to rebuild and to reflect. The staff of the Institute of Disaster Research was available from the morning after the storm to aid us in our process and to feed our thirst for information on how, as Architects and Engineers, we could help prevent loss of life and injury during this type of storm.

We learned. We learned the danger of panic, of running in our automobiles, the danger of being outside or traveling outdoors to our storm cellars. We learned the advantages of staying inside in small rooms in the center of the house. We learned how a small space could be reinforced in new or reconstructed homes, schools and other structures or places of refuge.

The following downloadable resource file illustrates examples of shelters which have been engineered to withstand the average tornado for use by you, to provide those places of safety a few steps away for your family. The advantages of the in-residence shelters are obvious, the expense is nominal, the need great. We requested the opportunity to aid Dr. Jim McDonald in distributing the information in the belief that lives would be saved and injuries prevented.