Last night, I turned on the Weather Channel, where discussion about the Moore, OK, tornado centered around discussion about creating safe rooms in every school in Oklahoma. They said each safe room costs a million dollars to build, and that there are 1,700 schools that need them. So, doing the math, Oklahoma would need $1.7 billion for this project. the population of Oklahoma is about 3.8 million, so that works out $450.00 for each person. For a typical family of five, that means a hit of $2,250.00. You can't raise that kind of money with a bake sale fundraiser. It would mean sharply-higher taxes, or extreme borrowing, or an infusion of massive amounts of outside money.
Ain't gonna happen.
Some rich places may end up with safe rooms, but life will go on as before on the Great Plains, ever at the mercy of the fickle weather. In a few weeks, everyone will forget the names of the kids killed in the Moore storm.
We're good at that - forgetting, that is.
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