Students, faculty, staff and parents work to clean up Notre Dame after storm damaged roof

Faculty and staff at Notre Dame Regional High School have been up since 1 a.m. trying to minimize and clean up damage from strong winds Tuesday night.

Students of Notre Dame Regional High School move furniture from the school's top level to the cafetorium Wednesday, April 20, 2011. The school received "tremendous damage" according to development director Tony Buehrle. The rubberized coating on a third of the roof rolled up causing rain from last night's storms to flood the upper level, kitchen, and music room in the west wing of the building. All faculty, 100 students and clean up crews are working on the mass clean up and repairs today. (Laura Simon)

A night maintenance worker discovered late Tuesday night that about 30 percent of the roof was damaged allowing water to leak into building's fine arts wing, said Bro. David Migliorino, the school's principal.

The school's kitchen, cafetorium, music rooms, dance studio and prop and costume storage areas all sustained water damage.

"The music room was decimated," Migliorino said. A considerable amount of sheet music was destroyed.

About 150 students along with all the school's teachers, some parents and school board members worked Wednesday to inventory the damage and clean up.

Professional cleaning crews were also called in to assist.

"We really had the best of the worst-case scenario. We are thankful no one was hurt and students weren't here when it happened," Migliorino said. "Everything is fixable."

Wednesday was a retreat day at the school, so students were not scheduled to be in class, the principal said.

About half of the students would have been out in the community today doing service projects, but most of those groups were redirected to help out at the school, he said.