Oklahoma Watch (https://oklahomawatch.org/tag/public-disasters/)
State data obtained by Oklahoma Watch shows that although a random lottery was used to distribute residential shelter rebates, some areas received shares well above or below their percentages of the state population.
Residents in some Oklahoma cities have won disproportionately large shares of rebates in the state’s residential storm-shelter program.
More than three in four likely voters favor requiring all primary schools to have tornado shelters and offering taxpayer-funded rebates to residents who install shelters in their homes.
METHODOLOGY
SoonerPoll.com conducted the random-sample, scientific survey from May 22 through June 12, using live telephone interviewers. Of the 402 respondents who participated, 108 were contacted by cell phone and 295 by land line. The combined results have been weighted to adjust for variation in the sample relating to age, sex and political party. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. For smaller subgroups, the margin of sampling error is larger. Some respondents were interviewed this week by Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit investigative team established to report on public policy issues in Oklahoma.
In the wake of tornadoes ravaging Oklahoma, a storm shelter company is heading to Washington, D.C., in search of financial assistance — and has hired a prominent lobbyist to help
Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma’s emergency management chief, tells Oklahoma Watch’s Warren Vieth that even at a cost of $500 million to $1 billion, adding a safe room to every school in the state can be done.
State officials have released a list of 85 public schools in Oklahoma that spent anywhere from $76,000 to more than $1 million per school to build safe rooms for students.
Oklahoma low-income and working-class residents are least able to afford residential storm shelters. But a grant program that defrays costs of such storm shelters doesn’t give priority to those residents.
Little in the national Storm Prediction Center’s summary of U.S. tornado activity through April suggested Oklahoma was about to suffer a tornado assault.
The author of a book on the 1999 Moore tornado examines the differences between the disaster 14 years ago and the one on May 20.