Jacksboro grows back stronger a year after EF-3 tornado strikes
JACKSBORO (CBSNewsTexas) - A year ago Wednesday, a large tornado ripped through Jacksboro, Texas, damaging around 80 homes and two schools.
CBS News Texas got an inside look at the ongoing recovery process ahead of the anniversary.
"It was unbelievable the amount of debris that was scattered across the gym floor," Jacksboro ISD Superintendent Brad Burnett said. "I don't know if you could ever imagine the extent of damage that we sustained."
Burnett gave CBS News Texas a tour of Jacksboro High School as recovery continues. He said he can't believe it's already been a year.
The Jacksboro elementary gym was destroyed and the roof of the high school gym was ripped off by an EF-3 tornado. The tornado tore apart the agriculture classrooms and certain areas of the football field, such as the press box and scoreboard. Luckily, no students or staff members were harmed during the disaster.
"The wind peeled, starting peeling the roof up and when the roof came up then that wall actually collapsed inward," Burnett said.
Murals painted by teachers now adorn the walls that stand where the gym used to be.
Right now the district said they're in the reconstruction phase. It took 5 weeks before elementary students could go back into their original classrooms and a year later, there's still much work to do.
"I would call this phase two. Our initial phase was just emergency repairs, clean up, debris removal, emergency repairs to classrooms to be able to get students back into the classrooms as soon as possible," Burnett said. "Throughout the summer we replaced the roofing materials."
"I'm anticipating at least another year, year and a half of reconstruction," Burnett said. "Timeline on our elementary gymnasium it's scheduled to be completed in December of this year."
Burnett said construction on the high school gym is going to be a little bit more complicated
"They're going to have to do some more demolition to do some structural repairs before they actually start the reconstruction process and so that's going to take about 18 months," Burnett said.
Burnett said he hopes the reconstruction will be complete sooner than later but supply chain issues with items like steel have slowed them down. Burnett said all this work has a $20 million price tag.
He hopes to host athletic events at the high school gym again in 2024 but for now, they're playing at the undamaged middle school.