Winds rip off barn roof at high school

ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) - A group of high school students have their work cut out following Sunday’s storms.

Strong winds ripped a metal roof off a barn housing more than a dozen sheep and goats on a farm behind McNeil High School.

Now, student members of the Future Farmers of America from both McNeil and Stony Point High School are left cleaning the mess and constructing new shelters for the animals that lived there.

Nearly every morning—even in the summer—the teenagers tend to the animals on the farm, but Monday, their work was much different.

"We came out here just to do normal feedings, and this is what we discovered—this mess and destruction," said Stephanie Smith, a high school senior and member of the FFA.

"We're assuming that it was some type of straight line wind that came and lifted the roof off this barn,” said Larry Vinclarek, an agriculture and science teacher at McNeil H.S. “It literally pulled the pipes straight out of the ground and lifted them in the air and just folded this roof over."

The barn housed about 20 goats and sheep.

"Thank God they were all okay,” said Smith, “We came out here and we just got them all out. We were cutting bolts and chains and locks.”

A 4-H member, nine-year-old Rachelle Yepez, was at the farm Sunday when the storms hit.

"There was nothing but a waller of water because of the wind," she said.

Rachelle says she climbed up on a stack of hay in a different barn to try and find a safe spot. Her main concern: her steer, which she's been raising for a year.

"You raise them until they get older, and you fall in love with them, and you get attached, and you just can't help it," Yepez said.

In the hot sun Monday afternoon, the future farmers cut wire and clipped and secured materials to build temporary shelters for the displaced animals.

They say it’s another lesson along the way in addition to what they already gain from their work.

"Leadership; and the agricultural experience of raising an animal—it just really builds you as a person," Smith said.

Vinklarek says the school district hopes to begin construction on a new barn as soon as Tuesday, and have it complete in about a month.