Mississippi College to build Safe Room

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There’s no record of a tornado ever hitting the Mississippi College campus in Clinton, but there’ve been some “very close calls,” says MC’s Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer Laura Jackson.
“We are in an area that is deemed to [have] a high likelihood of tornadoes and severe weather,” said Jackson. “We realized we don’t have a place on campus that the students, faculty and staff could go to that is storm-fortified.”
Soon, though, MC will have that sturdy building in which to ride out a tornado. The safe room that’s being built to withstand winds up to 250 miles an hour will be located in what’s now a parking lot on the western side of the campus and will be big enough to also accommodate members of the community.
“The current plan is for about a 15,000 square foot building, [providing shelter for] about 1,850 people,” Jackson says. “On any given day, we would have at least that many people on campus. [But] not everyone is going to respond and run to a safe room when the sirens go off.”
Jackson says the building is being designed to offer shelter for people within a five-minute walk or half-mile drive to campus, although those in Clinton who are farther away would also be able to use the safe room.
Most of the money to build it is coming from FEMA.
“We worked through our Congressional delegation to get an earmark under a program called Pre-Disaster Mitigation,” Jackson says. “FEMA will pay seventy-five per cent, and we’ll add a twenty-five per cent match. The grant is $5,063,000. We are very grateful to our Congressional delegation for helping us with that.”
She says the money will flow through the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
“They’re the local arm, so to speak, that will have oversight over the construction of the project.”
Jackson expects MEMA to receive the funding “probably before the end of September,” but there’s a lot of governmental red tape involved before ground can be broken for the safe room.
“We have three years from the date [the money] is awarded to get it finished. It’s a pretty intense process to go through with the federal government to make sure you jump through all their hoops as far as construction goes. So, it will take every bit of three years to get it built,” Jackson predicts.
Jackson says that, although the Mississippi College property is zoned S-1 and is not within the boundaries of the Olde Towne Historic District, the university feels they have an obligation to consider the impact of the project site on the District, which is currently listed on the National Register.
“We will work with the City of Clinton to obtain all necessary approvals, permits and certificates from the Mayor, the appropriate committees and the Board of Aldermen,” Jackson says.
The cost of operating the safe room will be Mississippi College’s responsibility.
“We provide all maintenance,” she says. “We provide operations when the building is open during a weather event. That is not something that MEMA or FEMA provide. That’s one hundred per cent on us.”
Although the primary purpose of the building is to serve as a community safe room, Jackson points out that it can have other uses- at MC’s discretion and expense.
“Let’s just say, for example, we decide to make it multi-purpose for intramural sports or an indoor workout facility for athletics. Anything we do to outfit it for indoor sports is on our dime, not the federal government’s dime.”
But Jackson notes that no final decision has been made on a secondary use for the safe room.
“I think it’s going to have the type of flooring and the type of outfitting that will make it usable for many functions.”
The City of Clinton already offers a small community safe room at Fire Station 4 on Pinehaven Road. Fire Chief Jeff Blackledge says it can accommodate about seventy people when stormy weather threatens.
Several years ago, the City was unsuccessful in getting a grant for a larger safe room which would have been located behind Station 2 on Old Vicksburg Road.