LOUDON, Tenn. — Around 2 p.m. on Monday, amidst the torrential rainfall and severe thunderstorm warnings across East Tennessee, one school lost a roof.
Loudon High School dismissed students around 1 p.m. due to the thunderstorm warnings. Most of the students left the building before the wind ripped the roof off. The debris spread across the school parking lot, and back of the school.
They also lost the roof of their concessions stand in the stadium.
Scott MacKintosh, the principal of the school, was shocked.
"It's a pretty decent-sized mess. It's mainly the roof of our auditorium, luckily it happened with no students here," MacKintosh said.
The principal said they have already communicated with contractors to evaluate the building and damages on Tuesday morning. The primary ones are in the auditorium. Some panels on the ceiling are wet and are starting to cave in.
"We're just a little bit concerned about the auditorium because our ceiling tiles are bowing down, they're full of water," he said. "Those, obviously, are going to be falling out of the roof. And it's about 40 feet high up in there. So anything that's dropping from that far is going to go to hurt. So we'll be out of there indefinitely until we get that fixed."
Loudon County High School started school last week. This was the third full day back in the building. MacKintosh said for the safety of the children, students have been asked to stay home on Tuesday. They will not have school.
He said some hallways had skylights burst, and an hour-and-a-half-long power outage caused a few issues the school needs to fix.
