Storm damages southwest Kansas high school

MEADE, Kan. (KSNW)—The storms that moved through Kansas Thursday night damaged the high school in Meade. The damage was bad enough that high school classes were canceled on Friday.

Meade County Emergency Management said the National Weather Service is assessing the damage to determine wind speeds. Currently, the NWS estimates a microburst with winds of 80 to 85 miles an hour hit the school.

Interim School Superintendent Rex Bruce says the district’s insurance agent estimates $500,000 in damage from the wind.

“It took the south part of our roof and our shop, woodshop building, took it up, blew it on top of the school, blew a big air conditioning unit, took it up and flipped it upside down, moved it about 15 feet. As it blew across, it punched holes in our roof all the way across different places,” he said. “So then, where the roof was gone, of course, that was our shop area, and it was completely flooded, and everywhere it had punched holes, we had water in the classrooms in those spots.”

He said it also blew the scoreboard from the football field about a quarter of a mile.

By Friday morning, about 30 workers were working on temporary roof repairs at the school.

“You try to band-aid them, and you miss one or two. Now, you’re just constantly chasing leaks and holes. That will just be a band-aid fix until we can get a new roof, and that will probably be, knowing of all the damage, not just from this storm but from other things, it’ll probably be springtime before they can get to that,” Bruce said.

The shop area will still be a problem.

“The shop area that doesn’t have the roof, it’s completely, it’s totally torn apart. The ceiling is falling in. Floors are buckled, so we won’t use that area,” Bruce said.

He says the shop can move to other areas of the school.

Bruce said community members, school board members, and around 10 students showed up Friday morning and offered to help. But he said they hired a company to do the cleanup because they did not want to put anyone at risk.

He hopes to reopen the school by Tuesday. He says all high school activities for Friday and this weekend will continue as planned.

Bruce said the damage is just to a small area of town.

“There’s two or three homes I know of. One of our board member’s tree had fallen into his house and punctured the skylight and part of his roof,” the school superintendent said. “Just a small area, but it did a lot of damage to us.”

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