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Walker Valley High Builds Catastrophic Resistant Building

704 views · Published 20 February 2014 · 2:55 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: WTVC NewsChannel 9 · 2014 · News & Politics

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With severe weather in the forecast, safety at school is top of mind for many parents.This week is Severe Weather Awareness Week for Tennessee. Many local schools, like Dupont Elementary, are preparing early and participated in a statewide tornado drill. But how safe our some of our schools in our area?Our search landed us in Charleston at Walker Valley High School.It may look like your ordinary school building on the outside. But inside, it possibly could be Bradley County's safest school.These are just standard classrooms and you can see when you go into the room, the heat and air unit is on the inside of the building. Nothing on the outside. That's part of the safety features of a storm safe building, says Walker Valley Principal Danny Coggin.The walls are solid concrete from top to bottom, making the structure durable enough to withstand an EF-4 tornado and 250 mile per hour sustained winds.As for the windows, they're strong enough to withstand a 2x4 hitting them at 100 miles per hour.That's not all.Each of the eight classrooms is equipped with this panic alert system.The teacher has a remote that's with them. So if there's an emergency of some kind, they can alert us in the office, they can tell us what room it's in, and we can get up here and see what we can do about it, says Coggin.If the power goes out a backup system kicks in for electricity. The new building is welcome news to students at Walker Valley High.I was pretty excited because with the storms that came through last time, they were pretty devastating in some areas. In the case of another storm coming through, we'll all be safe and we'll all be a lot safer here, says Walker County Senior Colton Morrow.Principal Coggin says he hopes the new building will be complete by the end of next month. By Alyssa Spirato

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