While the trees and debris from the July 31st thunderstorm are mostly picked up, the roof over the gym at Millard North Middle School is still damaged and the gym remains unusable. According to Millard Public Schools Associate Superintendent Dr. Heather Phipps, “We took a contract to the board for the roofing repairs and it will take anywhere between 3 and 5 months to get it repaired… right now North middle school… can’t use the gym.”
The National Weather Service says a category 1 hurricane produces wind speeds of 74-95 miles per hour. On Wednesday, July 31st Omaha experienced winds of 90+ miles per hour. Omaha, Nebraska, and surrounding areas were slammed with hurricane-force winds. Straight-line winds pummeled buildings, snapped trees in half, and knocked over power lines leaving thousands without power.
“[It was] a major outage event affecting 218,000 customers,” according to OPPD. Traffic lights across Omaha were without power making driving a difficult task.
The storm impacted organizations and individuals throughout the city. Dr Heather Phipps of MPS said, “When all was said and done the power outages were very difficult for several days, but the biggest long-term impact was the roof over the gym at Millard North Middle school,” which lost “a good chunk of its roof…” and “will be impacted for months.”
North Middle cannot use the gym at all, and according to Phipps, “they’re getting really creative in where they do things right now.” The day after the storm everyone except maintenance and grounds crew were asked to stay home. Crews “systematically worked through all of the buildings to clear them for safety.” Eventually all the schools, even ones without power, except Millard North Middle School were cleared. Phipps said roof repairs for Millard North Middle would end up costing around 835,000 dollars.
“So not only from a logistical standpoint, but from a financial standpoint it has implications,” said Phipps. “All 35… [schools were impacted by the storm].”
MPS has 35 schools and 3 district support buildings that were all affected.
“Even buildings that didn’t lose power, lost branches, lost trees, and had leaves blown everywhere,” said Phipps.
On the night of the storm, 14 MPS buildings were without power.
“[The Thursday after the storm] …was supposed to be the first day that teachers came back to work and we did not have them report because we knew Wednesday night [that] we had such a significant impact from the storm… we knew people needed a day,” said Phipps.
On the Friday after the storm, 6 buildings were still without power. By the end of the weekend, Sandoz Elementary still had no power and it wasn’t restored until Monday.
“Teachers do a lot of things at the beginning of the school year, like get their rooms ready, [and] make photocopies,” said Phipps.
With an open house the following Tuesday, the buildings that had been out of power were significantly affected by the loss.
Dr. Phipps explained that after the storm they made the decision to cancel a district-wide kickoff that was “6 months in the making” and had not happened since 13 years prior. 3,000 staff members had planned to gather at Buell Stadium.
“It was a really big deal,” said Phipps. “We were excited for it. We had speakers, we had vendors, we had t-shirts like we were ready to go and we canceled it.” Phipps explained that they knew that for the schools that did not have power, the teachers needed time in their classrooms.
“It took 6 months to plan it and an hour to cancel it,” said Phipps. Phipps said hopefully the kickoff will be able to happen at the beginning of next year.
The storm impacted individual students as well. Junior Roosevelt Wilken was home alone when the storm hit. When the emergency alerts went off he went down to his basement to shelter, put music on his Bluetooth speaker and played pool against himself. Then the power went out. Wilken states that soon,
“The storm got much more real,” He says. “Before, it was like, you know, I heard it was raining and could sort of hear maybe the trees moving, but then the lightning started and it was so close to the windows… whenever there was a lightning strike it was… the entire room would fill with a flash of light, and about a second later there was a pop,” said Wilken. Wilken explained that he does not get good cell reception in his basement and would go up the stairwell and reach his hand over to get messages.
“I usually sleep through storms, they kind of help me go to bed, but like this was more real, ” he said.
Wilken lives in North Omaha and says he was without power for a week. He said this was the second storm this summer that knocked out his power for a considerable time. When asked how he adjusted to life without power he said he often went over to friends’ and relatives houses and, “…mostly just tried to stay out of the house as much as possible.”
“I drove around a lot,” he said. “You know I was just like, I’ll get myself lunch, I’ll maybe look at shoes at The Westroads, I’ll just do stuff that I normally wouldn’t do.” Power out meant streetlights were out. Wilken explains there are laws for how to treat roads when the lights go out, it’s supposed to be treated like an all-way stop.
“That didn’t happen,” he said. “I was driving so often that I’d pull up to places and be like, just no one gets it.”
“It makes you realize like when people don’t follow the rules, there is not a system,” explained Wilken. He said that many roads were blocked and he had to, “take more creative routes to get places.” In terms of storm damage, Wilken said that a previous storm had taken out all the trees that were going to fall near his home so the ones left “were pretty reliable” and other than some limbs down he did not have too much damage directly to his yard.
When asked if this storm would change the way he thinks about future storms he said, “I think honestly I’d say I’d be more eager to accept help because originally like when my friend texted me [after the storm and power outages] I was like I’ll be fine and was like, hmm, I mean, I may as well make this less miserable for myself” He also mentioned even though he was already fairly cautious, it’s important to recognize the gravity of the situation rather than just thinking it’s another severe weather warning.
“It was definitely like, oh yeah, thunderstorms are really a force of nature huh,” said Wilken.
A force of nature and a powerful one at that. For the past few weeks, trucks have picked up piles of debris around the city. Slowly but surely things are starting to return to normal, though the city likely won’t be the same for a while with the loss of trees and damage that the storm brought. And for the students and staff at North Middle School they will have to work around having no functional gym for much of the school year.
