Updated Tuesday, Feb. 10

Jeremy Gaston | Staff Writer

A brief but strong spring storm fell early on Osage County and the rest of northeast Kansas this week, with severe storms moving through the area early Monday morning.

Wind, verified by trained weather spotters at speeds above 60 and 65 mph, left spotted damage across the county, causing damage to a barn eat of Burlingame, a commercial building in downtown Carbondale, and, for the second time in 10 months, damaging the roof of the Lyndon High School gymnasium.

“Yesterday morning about 8:15, the weather radio went off,” said Lyndon USD 420 Superintendent Brian Spencer. “We saw a few pieces of shingle fall off, and put the kids down in the storm shelters.”

Shortly after, a call came from another building, telling administrators inside the high school the roof was falling off, again.

“It calmed down, we went out and the roof was gone,” he said.

Once the weather passed and the winds receded, they were able to assess the damage.

“The initial thought was I hope it’s not worse,” Spencer said. “It looked bad, but it’s nothing compared to what we had a year ago.”

Workers from Dale Poe Commercial Roofing, Emporia, had already begun to assess the damage on Monday. With calmer conditions Tuesday, they began the process of repairing the damage. Poe anticipated the repairs would take, at most, several days.

Poe noted Monday’s damage was, in part, due to the parts of the structure to which the roof was fastened. Several boards along the top of the brick walls were poorly anchored to the brick walls, others appeared to be not fastened at all.

Poe said the school would be hiring an engineer to assess the situation.

“If we have to redo all the fasteners, it’ll only take three or four days.”

The quick fix to the problem would allow more immediate use of the gymnasium.

“They’ll have it waterproofed [Tuesday],” Spencer said. “We’ll play basketball here Friday night.”

Elsewhere in the county, limbs and part of the roof of a metal barn were strewn across Highway 56, two miles east of Burlingame, where storms blew through about the same time.

A commercial building at Third and Main St. in Carbondale also suffered major damage. The open end of a pitched tin roof over the structure caught high south winds, flipping it over onto other parts of the roof. The building, owned by Bud Garcia, has not been occupied for several years.
 

Photos by Jeremy Gaston, Barb PRost| Herald-Chronicle