DeKalb County High School, DeKalb Middle School, and the DCHS Vocational School buildings received damage from high winds during a severe thunderstorm Wednesday afternoon.
As a result, DeKalb County schools will be closed Thursday.
Director of Schools Mark Willoughby told WJLE that the extent of the damage will be evaluated Thursday morning. “This evening (Wednesday) the storm came through and I don’t know if it was a tornado at the middle school and high school,” said Willoughby. It was probably just high winds blowing. But after the worst of it got over myself and the maintenance crew went on top of the buildings. We’ve got some damage to the middle school, the facial part of the middle school and evidently some large cuts in the roof. We haven’t found those cuts but lots of water have come into certain parts of the school. At the vocational building we had a large window almost blown out of the frame. We’ve got some electrical problems throughout the high school and maybe the middle school and vocational school also. We’re trying to clear those up. We’re just waiting until tomorrow morning (Thursday) so we can get into the buildings to see what’s really wrong. A tree blew down behind the vocational school at the high school and damaged a fence. The high school football scoreboard looks like its twisted around.. We’ve got a lot of aluminum off the facial board of the vocational school that is blown off onto the street. We’ve seen metal on top of the buildings from different places. We’re not sure where its come from. But there’s damage to where we don’t want to let the kids go into the school buildings tomorrow morning (Thursday) so that’s why we’ve decided to close schools. We’ll evaluate some things tomorrow (Thursday). Hopefully we’ll be back in school Friday morning. We’ve got people showing up from the insurance and roofing companies tomorrow morning (Thursday) to help us get things going,” said Willoughby.
PLAY VIDEO BELOW OF DIRECTOR OF SCHOOLS MARK WILLOUGHBY
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