RINGLE – Over 460 Riverside Elementary School students and dozens of staff returned to the school May 4 following almost two weeks in a temporary location after an EF3 tornado on April 17 damaged the building.
Students, school staff, district leaders and community members gathered in the school’s multi-purpose room for an all-school assembly on the afternoon of May 4 to celebrate the efforts of staff, students and the broader community in helping the school return from temporary classrooms at the Greenheck Turner Community Center, or GTCC.
“We talked when we were over at GTCC that all of us have had a very varied experience,” Principal Kevin Kampmann said at the assembly. “Some of our houses and yards look exactly the same, some of our houses and yards look very different.”
“We’ve all had a different experience, the important part though, is that we’re all safe,” Kampmann said. There were no injuries reported as a result of the storm despite about 75 homes in the area being damaged or destroyed.
Helpers receive recognition
The school’s night custodial staff, the Ringle Fire Department, D.C. Everest Area School District, construction and engineering contractors and staff of GTCC received special recognition during the assembly. Over 150 emergency personnel were in the area helping residents in the hours following the storm.
Three members of the custodial staff were in the building when the tornado passed through the area on a late Friday afternoon. With an awareness of the storms predicted to hit the area, they took several precautions including arriving early to work, watching their phones for warnings and identifying the safest room in the building, an internal conference room with a heavy wooden table to hide under.
“It only lasted like three seconds and it was over,” Wanda Plisch, custodian, told a Wausau Daily Herald reporter. She said the pressure in the building felt five times stronger than being in an airplane and she heard a heavy women’s bathroom door swing open and closed three times as the tornado passed by.
The building remained structurally sound but two classrooms on the building’s west end received damage to bricks on the outside wall, an exterior wall on the building’s library “blew out” and a glass wall on the south side of the building collapsed, Kampmann told a Wausau Daily Herald reporter.
The custodians waited until the winds quieted down before they left the conference room and they were able to walk out of the building.
“I count my blessings, I really do,” Plisch said. “Don’t take Mother Nature for granted.”
What’s next for students?
While the students, staff and district leaders made the best of temporary spaces at GTCC, they are happy to be back in their regular building.
“We are very fortunate that we had (GTCC) within our community and to be able to use it,” Kampmann said. “That being said, the turf space isn’t an ideal classroom so we made the very best of the space that we had.”
Typical classroom learning spaces for students in lower grade levels were able to be mostly replicated in conference rooms and other temporary spaces while fourth and fifth grade occupied space separated by cloth room dividers on one end of the facility’s turf field, Kampmann explained.
Students returned to classroom-based learning at GTCC on April 22 and remained in the temporary spaces through May 1. The first week back to school at GTCC focused on the students checking in on each other and making sure everyone felt safe returning to school before returning to mostly regular coursework during the second week, Kampmann said.
“Now we’re back here and we’re gonna jump right back in and finish the year out strong,” Kampmann said. Due to the nature of the disruption, students will not need to attend additional school days to make up for lost instructional time, Kampmann said.
“The most important thing of this entire thing is the people here within this building, and the fact that we are all safe, we are all OK, and, like our T-shirts say, ‘We are Everest Strong.'” Kampmann said.
How you can help
Donations to help those impacted by the April 17 tornado in the Ringle area can be made through the Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin’s Emergency Relief Fund at https://tornado.cfoncw.org.
Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA TODAY NETWORK – Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Contact him at epfantz@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: Students return to Riverside Elementary School after Ringle tornado
Reporting by Erik Pfantz, Wausau Daily Herald / Wausau Daily Herald
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
