By admin 
BUCKEYE, AZ (AZFamily) — Lightning struck Verrado Heritage Elementary School in Buckeye Thursday morning, just minutes after staff opened gates early to get students inside ahead of an approaching storm.
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Principal Merideth Noce said staff were tracking the weather as early as 7:30 a.m. and made the call to open gates early, ahead of the usual 7:45 a.m. start, to get students inside before the storm arrived. Lightning struck just minutes later.
“Right before it hit the building, or perhaps at the same time, some of my staff were near the courtyard doors by the front office and saw that they sparked,” Noce said.
Surveillance video timestamped 7:40 a.m. shows a flash of light and a crack of thunder, followed a second later by debris falling from the gymnasium roof onto the concrete below.
See the video shared by Verrado Heritage Elementary School below:
“It was almost like a plane hitting a building. It was very startling. It was definitely very loud,” Noce said, recalling how staffers described the sound.
Arizona’s Family crews at the scene saw damage to several bricks on the edge of the gymnasium roof, with rubble still on the ground where it had fallen.
A roofing professional confirmed the damage is minimal and not structural, the school said in a statement.
No one was in the courtyard when lightning struck, and no one was hurt. Noce said that part of the school isn’t usually occupied at that time of day.
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Storms cause outages, road closures
The same storm created a lightshow for those looking toward the West Valley early Thursday morning.
Lightning strikes also temporarily knocked out power to thousands of customers across the region. Arizona Public Service reported more than 1,600 outages in Goodyear, 1,800 in Peoria and 1,900 in Surprise.
The storm’s impact was also felt south of the Valley. The Arizona Department of Transportation closed State Route 238 between Gila Bend and Maricopa due to flooding, a common occurrence when heavy monsoon storms sweep through the region.
The storm’s impact was also felt south of the Valley. The Arizona Department of Transportation closed State Route 238 between Gila Bend and Maricopa due to flooding, a common occurrence when heavy monsoon storms sweep through the region.
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