Destroyed South Winn press box. (Calmar Fire Dept. photo.)
The Governor has issued a disaster proclamation for Allamakee, Clayton, Harrison, Shelby, and Winneshiek counties following weekend storm damage.
The South Winneshiek School District has buildings in Calmar and Ossian, and Superintendent Kris Einck says the sports facilities had the most damage.
“Our brand new press box is gone. Unfortunately, you know that’s just it is what it is we will rebuild it. There’s no doubt in my mind that it will be rebuilt but the scoreboard at the baseball field was pushed over again we can get that fixed,” he says. “Two of the football lights, track lights were pushed down. So we’ll have to get those fixed, and then our softball complex sustained some damage. We had our bleachers behind the home plate they’re thrown up over the backstop.”
The school buildings escaped the storm with no major issues. “The buildings are fine. The Elementary Middle School in Ossian really had very minimal damage and a little bit of water, nothing major. The high school same thing — we had some rooftop air conditioning units that got flipped over, we’ve had that happen before. We were without power for a while but you know what, those are things easy fixes,” he says.
Einck says things could have been a lot worse. “Very happy that no one got hurt or worse we can replace things, we can replace facilities, we can replace scoreboard boards and building but we can’t replace people,” Einck says.
Einck says they will begin meeting with insurance adjusters today.
(By Darin Svenson, KDEC, Decorah)