Tornado damage estimate to Hempfield school set at $1.5M

The Hempfield Area School District sustained $1.5 million in damages from last week's tornado, according to the district's business manager.

Jude Abraham said insurance adjusters said much of the damage centered on the sports stadium, located behind the high school on Route 136.

"The stadium is definitely going to be a large chunk of it," Abraham said. "They're still assessing the turf. It doesn't appear to be horribly damaged. There appears to be some damage, but it's not a total loss."

The school district last year spent $660,000 to install a new layer of artificial grass because of the age of the old turf.

Abraham said engineers inspected the press box and it may not be as badly damaged as first thought.

"The entire press box is not unsafe like they believed. ...But once the debris is cleaned up, they will get a better assessment of the true damage," he added.

Westmoreland County officials say they may never know the exact amount of damage from last week's tornado, which ravaged parts of Sewickley and Hempfield townships because "99 percent of the property and business damage is covered by insurance."

Emergency Management spokesman Dan Stevens said 94 homes were damaged by the storm. That figure includes 29 with minor damage; 13 with major damage; and 9 homes destroyed. Eight businesses were damaged, he said.

Stevens last week said a preliminary estimate of the damage was $4.5 million. Because most of the damage is covered by insurance, county officials have no way of providing an overall damage estimate.

"Early on we said $4.5 million. That's probably going to grow 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 times," he added. "We don't know. None of the businesses indicated they would suffer substantial economic losses.

"The silver lining to this entire storm is people are insured. We do not foresee state or federal assistance coming," Stevens said.

Recovery efforts will continue this week as crews shift their efforts to Adamsburg to help with cleanup operations there. He said more than 1,000 volunteers helped Saturday with cleanup in Rillton and Fort Allen.

"There's very little debris left around the houses that homeowners will have to pick up," Stevens said. "We had a father and son from State College get up at 4 a.m. so they could be in Fort Allen by 7 a.m. to help. The turnout was absolutely phenomenal."