NEOSHO, Mo. — The largest tornado shelter in Missouri hides in plain sight.

To the casual observer, it does not cry out “tornado safe room,” but on closer inspection, telltale signs are evident. For one thing, there are no windows in that part of the building designed to provide protection. A steel door can roll down to secure a key entrance to the shelter. The building has its own generator for emergency power. Walls are noticeably thicker, too — a foot thick, in fact. They are designed to withstand penetration from a 15-pound object hurled at speeds of nearly 170 mph.

Davidson Hall, on the campus of Crowder College in Neosho, houses the health and science programs, and biology and chemistry labs. It also was designed to shelter 3,000 people from winds of 250 mph.

“It’s very architecturally interesting,” said Cyndi Adamson, director of Crowder’s Webb City campus, which is following Neosho’s lead and wants a similar shelter for its campus.

“If you see the inside of that building, you’d never know you’re in a tornado safe area,” she said. “The only way you’d know is the signs posted.”

Davidson Hall, a two-story building, opened in January 2011. It adjoins McDonald Hall. Combined, the two buildings offer 25,000 square feet, with 15,000 square feet designated as a tornado safe space. That space was paid for with $2.18 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding. The additional 10,000 square feet was funded by the Don and Ethel Davidson family, which has ties to the college.

Adamson now wants something similar for her campus. She said the Crowder campus in Webb City has outgrown its current buildings, with enrollment going from 20 students 12 years ago to 823 today.

“Some of the classrooms are converted from closets or offices,” she said.

“We sought federal funding to provide a tornado safe room, but we also needed to add space for classrooms to accommodate growth.”

Administrators hope to hear within a few weeks whether an application to FEMA for a grant for a $1.15 million, 8,900-square-foot addition has been approved. The college would be responsible for coming up with $380,000. Construction could begin this fall, with an estimated completion date for the fall semester of 2013.

Adamson feels positive about Crowder’s chances: “All indications we’re getting is they will approve us.”

Two birds, one stone

Webb City’s Crowder campus is among a string of Southwest Missouri schools trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Brad Erwin, with Paragon Architecture, of Springfield, said it’s not only the largest such shelter, but it soon may have a lot of company in the area. He said his firm is assisting about 20 school districts in the region with grant applications to FEMA for tornado safe room funding. Several are waiting for final approval, but the procedure takes time.

“We’ve been working with Fair Grove since 2009, and East Newton was February 2010,” Erwin said.

Those two districts were released to begin the bid procedure two weeks ago, he said. East Newton is considering an addition that would hold 600 people, and Fair Grove’s would hold close to 1,600 people.

“We’ve also been working with McDonald County schools since February 2009, and Neosho schools for quite a while,” Erwin said.

Neosho School District officials said in January that they were getting closer to securing federal funding for a second gymnasium that would hold more than 2,000 people during a storm, and Webb City officials learned last week that they may be eligible for funding for four safe rooms to be built throughout the school district.

Joplin officials have committed to putting storm shelters in all of the district’s schools, even those that were not damaged in the May 22 tornado.

“The reason we targeted districts is, generally speaking, they have the most vulnerable concentrated population within a town, but also have the ability to open a facility to the public,” Erwin said. “If you were to put something in a city hall, you can’t bus kids there and get there in time. So we made districts aware of the program.”

Putting storm shelters in schools raises a lot of questions, including the logistics of opening the buildings for residents when the buildings would otherwise be closed.

Adamson said she worried about who would be responsible for opening the safe room after hours, and what might happen if that person were out of town during a storm. That challenge most likely would be solved by the installation of an integrated sensor system.

The East Newton and Fair Grove school districts will have the first tornado safe spaces to use such a system, developed by Paragon Architecture and consultants and designed to receive tornado warnings from the National Weather Service. Those signals automatically unlocks doors, and turn on lights, heating, air conditioning and security cameras.

“The thing we hate to see — and we have seen it happen with a basement in a church or a city hall — is a mass of 15 people waiting in the parking lot for someone to unlock the door,” Erwin said.

Don Melton, Webb City’s emergency management director, said the possibility of a large shelter on the local Crowder campus was welcome news.

“I think it will be beneficial to the community to have a sizable shelter in that area, farther away from the public library, which is currently our only shelter we open,” he said.