A lot of people here have shelters that simply cannot be destroyed by an F-5. You may be buried under rubble, but you aren’t going to die. There are several underground shelters on my block alone. The schools here should have similar safe rooms or shelters that are designed to handle direct hits. I believe both of the demolished schools were relatively new, so they could have been built to protect the children.
I think that’s part of the reason why some parents are so infuriated that the children weren’t released to their parents when it was still safe to do so. From what I understand, some parents actually went to the school, asked for their children, and were turned away (this will need to be confirmed—it’s rumor right now). The parents may have had much better shelters than the school. Like I wrote, in ground shelters are very common in homes here.
I heard they only had 15 minutes warning so who knows. The whole thing is tragic but I can tell you one thing..NO ONE AT A SCHOOL WOULD HAVE KEPT ME FROM GETTING MY CHILD!!