On March 14, 2025, areas in St. Louis County suffered severe storms that included heavy rain, hail, strong winds and tornadoes. This severe weather caused damage to houses, cars and business, including OHS.
“A lot of things blew off of the top of the building. This thing called flashing, that kind of goes around the border, blew off in various spots,” assistant principal Dr. Matt Gaglio said. “We had the field goal posts fall down — kind of impressive. A lot of things like the mats [and] track and field things were blown in different spots.”
Currently the field goal is split in half and lying on the track, but the necessary work to fix it and other damage from the storm has already been started, like fixing windows and gathering all blown away track items.
“I believe we already ordered some replacement pieces for the goalpost. Very long boxes were delivered,” Gaglio said. “One thing I did forget to mention was some of our windows blew open and rain and some moisture got into classrooms, so there was some damage to teachers’ stuff, but we also had that stuff kind of fixed.”
Since these storms and tornadoes happened at the beginning of spring break, there were no classes or sports in session, but district personnel did come up to deal with the aftermath.
“Our building principal, Mr. Brennan, was around the building. We have cameras everywhere, so we can look at feeds whenever, wherever we are, and we saw some stuff was blown around,” Gaglio said. “So he came up, some of our central office facilities staff came up, and then our custodial staff was up here as well, trying to help and get things done before teachers got back and students came back in.”
Fortunately, the damage to the school did not impact any spring sports or classes once students and teachers returned from spring break.
“Right now, football’s not in season, so we don’t really need goalposts. We’re trying to get that done whenever people who, I don’t know what qualifications are needed to fix a goalpost, but whoever is available will then do that,” Gaglio said.
As the school works to make all necessary repairs from the storm, many South County residents were devastated by the storm, with hundreds of pictures, videos and statements being posted on social media by the community. With more severe storms in the forecast recently, there has been some fear that additional damage may occur, but if it does, that is something the school will have to deal with as it happens.
“To prevent more damage, it’s hard to do,” Gaglio said. “We reinforced some of the flashing on the roof, just making sure things that are preventable are prevented, but it’s hard to anticipate what can happen…”
