Tornado Can't Break Kalwall® Connection to Phone Company
"As a rule, we don't get this kind of weather so late in the season," observes Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company general manager Emory Graffis. "Of course, a tornado doesn't necessarily play by the rules."
To make matters worse, one tornado became several, born of a string of storms cruising through northeastern Nebraska and neighboring western Iowa. There were reports of funnels touching down in several counties of both states as the monstrous, mid-August winds reached speeds up to 88 miles per hour. Tales of trashed power lines, farm buildings, and crops poured in from throughout the region. By 11:00pm, the entire population of Jackson, Nebraska, was evacuated as the State Patrol stood watch overnight to secure the town. Before dawn, both the National Guard and the Red Cross were in position to help residents as they slowly returned.
Among them was Emory Graffis, who surveyed the damage to the telephone company structure. "The entire office area at the west side of our building was gone," he remembers. "Concrete blocks had fallen all over the place." The warehouse area next door was even less fortunate. Completely torn asunder by the tornado, steel joists from its roof also landed on the telephone office. "The joists had been painted red and one of them hit our skylight. We know this because we found red paint on the skylight's dented ridge cap and on a nearby face sheet." Northeast Nebraska Telephone installed the Kalwall® skylight in 1993 to bring glare-free, evenly balanced daylight to a central hallway and adjoining interior spaces.
Kalwall's durability was put to yet another test just one week after Jackson's tornadoes when the area was pelted by a heavy rainstorm. Water seeped into the telephone office through a damaged rubber membrane in the roof. Amazingly, however, despite some bent I-beams and a handful of cracked face sheets, there was no delamination and not one drop of water entered the building through the Kalwall skylight. Tornado-driven dirt had already entered but could not penetrate a few panels; rainwater simply flowed back out through the face sheets the same way it came in. "There was even a rip the size of a volleyball in one of the interior sheets," notes Graffis, "and still no leak. It's a tribute to both the strength and design of Kalwall."
A tribute, perhaps, but not a surprise. After all, Kalwall was the panel that stood up to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Southern Florida racked up $20 billion in property damage, but the Kalwall skyroof atop Boca Raton's Temple Beth El came through unscathed and leak-free. Meanwhile, just west of Andrew's eye, winds over 165 miles per hour literally blew the doors off of a private home. The hurricane wiped out the interior but the Kalwall stayed in one piece. And both projects were standard-grade Kalwall systems, not the newly developed Super-Hurricane/Tornado Resistant System which is even stronger!
Back in Nebraska, Graffis is glad that Northeast Nebraska Telephone chose Kalwall. "The skylight suffered damage but maintained its integrity. All things considered, Kalwall held up very well."
Kalwall Specifications:
Light Transmission: 17%
U-Factor: .24 by NFRC
Panel Color: White
Trim Color: WhiteArchitect: Reed, Veatch, Wildeman
For more information, contact:
Bruce Keller
Kalwall Corporation
1-800-258-9777
