Bemidji Area Schools Continuing Cleanup & Repairs After Storm

The Bemidji School District was not spared from the damage that the recent storm brought to the area, with many of the schools within the city receiving structural damage. Most of the damage that they have seen so far occurred on the rooftops of buildings.

Bemidji Middle School, Bemidji High School, J.W. Smith Elementary, and Gene Dillon Elementary all saw damage from the wind and trees. There were holes and water leaking into buildings, and in some places, the roof was lifted off.

Even though it’s summertime and school doesn’t start for many weeks, the district has been working on repairing damages since they first happened.

“In my 17 years as a superintendent, I’ve never seen damage to this extent to schools,” said Bemidji Area Schools superintendent Jeremy Olson. “So first of all, we took care of the safety—anything that pose a safety [issue]. You know, obviously the trees that were partially leaning over anything, that presented a hazard for people coming into the buildings or leaving the buildings. That was our first priority, and then obviously to mitigate water coming into our buildings.”

The water mitigation and initial wave of cleanup was done at all of the schools by the grounds teams, but to fully fix damages and get long-term roof repairs, the district will have to hire professional contractors. However, a lot of work has already been done over the past two weeks.

“I just have a tremendous respect for all of our building and grounds people,” he stated. “Many people came in to clean up the schools when they had property damage themselves personally. We just saw our people stepping up like crazy. Good people, good community. You know, we’re pulling together. I just have a lot of respect, again, for the building and grounds people, all the people that rushed in and really tried to make a bad situation a little bit better.”

As of now, all schools in the district are set to be repaired and damage-free by the time classes start back up in the fall.