EF-0, 80-mile winds damage Vina High

National Weather Service Authorities have determined it was an EF-0 tornado that wreaked mild havoc at Vina High School this weekend, according to Superintendent Gary Williams.

Canopies were ripped from their posts by 80 mile-per-hour winds and smashed into windows in the school’s main building and science building. On both the science building and the gym, Williams said, the roof was raised up and set back down – one whole side, for the gym, and on one corner of science building.

At the baseball field, the roof was blown of one of the dugouts. Fencing was also knocked down on campus. But, as Williams optimistically pointed out, “luckily we’ve had no water damage.”

“We have contacted the insurance company to come out and do appraisals and we’ll have to let them look at everything, and then we’ll go from there and get it all repaired,” Williams said. “Hopefully the entire roofs won’t have to be replaced.”

Williams said he feared the worst when he got the call that the school had been damaged, but all in all, things could have been much worse.

The science/band building was off limits Monday, but students were back in their classrooms by Tuesday, despite the debris.

Insurance representatives were set to be on campus assessing today. “It’s hard to say (what repairs will be necessary) until you look under there and see how much structural damage there is,” Williams said.

But despite the storm, the outlook is overall positive. “No one was hurt. That’s the good thing. It was in the evening and no one was there,” Williams said. “There could have been someone hurt if it was during the school day … We can repair these buildings. We’re just so lucky no one was hurt.”