Up to $1 million damage at Dwyer High
One roof torn; four to six classrooms unusable as school reopens today.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — The Monday morning tornado that plowed across the county’s north end peeled back the roof on one William T. Dwyer High classroom and made four to six classrooms in all unusable. It also perilously cracked a glass atrium in the school’s main stairwell, canceling classes for more than 2,200 students. But the doors will be open to welcome them back this morning, district officials said.
The storms had cleared by sunrise, but left $500,000 to $1 million in damage — much of it to the school’s athletic fields — in their wake.
District employees spent much of the day cleaning up and figuring out how to best make repairs so that students could safely negotiate the stairway, in the end opting to remove the glass.
“We need to get school open tomorrow,” Superintendent Robert Avossa said. “I also can’t risk the safety of the children and the teachers.”
It was unclear if the glass had been hit by something or if pressure from the storm inside the building caused it to break.
T h e t o r n a d o a l s o p l o we d through the athletic facilities at The Benjamin School’s Upper School on Grandiflora Road. The storm mangled bleachers, tossing them in the median of Central Boulevard, and snapping a pole sending it flying a mile east
Juno Beach mobile home park took brunt of morning tornado.
Bedroom, car windows break in Gardens’ Mirabella community.
to Dwyer High School’s campus on North Military Trail.
The Benjamin School also will reopen its doors today.
“While our athletic facilities suffered extensive damage from the tornado, our academic spaces were spared. Classes will resume tomorrow,” the school posted on its Twitter page Monday evening.
Dwyer High was built in 1990 and upgraded in 2006 and was due for a new roof and a long list of other repairs and replacements with money from the penny sales tax that voters approved in November.
The tornado took a toll on two areas of the roof, Avossa said. It was unclear Monday afternoon if the damage would require more
A tornado descending from the darkness ripped a ragged alley of destruction in northern Palm Beach County, investigators confirmed in Monday’s light, closing two schools, slashing power to thousands and sending residents scrambling for safety from rough weather that proved deadly across the Southeast U.S.
Peak winds up to 90 mph tore through Palm Beach Gardens and Juno Beach along a path nearly 6 miles long and up to 130 yards wide, National Weather Service survey crews found.
In the Mirabella community in Palm Beach Gardens, residents reported windows blown out and walls buckling but miraculously, no reports of serious injuries.
As an eerie light, water and d e b r i s f l o o d e d i n t h ro u g h a smashed window, Connie Aliaga’s husband said in those terrifying moments before 2 a.m.: “We’re going to heaven.”
The sound of high winds woke Richie Nestro of Jupiter. He and his wife huddled in an interior closet of their Indian Creek home.
“I’ve been down here for hurricanes but when you hear tornado warning, you’re thinking roofs coming off,” he said. “When that emergency alert came on — take shelter now — that was scary.”
The tornado touched down about 1:39 a.m. in the Palm Beach Gardens area just west of Florida’s Turnpike, a National Weather Service report said.
It took a path to the east and northeast, causing damage in multiple locations in Palm Beach Gardens and Juno Beach, officials said. The path ended near Juno Beach Park at about 1:47 a.m.
“During the time it was on the ground, the damage indicated that the tornado varied in strength between an EF-0 and an EF-1, with some of the worst damage from the Mirabella community to the Benjamin School,” the report said, referring to categories of tornado strength.