Riverside Jr. High damaged by 18-wheeler

The main building at the Riverside Junior High School in Caraway received damage on Thursday, Dec. 19, when an 18-wheeler drove onto the gym parking lot to turn around. The driver had missed his turn. The truck caught the power line and pulled it down along with a utility pole. The power supply to the junior high building was yanked from the building taking with it bricks and blocks. The result was a loss of power and a gaping hole about six feet in diameter on the southeast end of the building. Also, four of the teacher's vehicles were damaged by the power lines pole being dragged across.

To repair the building, two walls of the computer lab that houses Ms. Kathy Baldridge's classroom had to be torn down to the ground due to cracks and breaks in the brick and block structure. The computer class had to be moved to the accelerated reading/library computer lab temporarily. Construction should be completed in a couple weeks.

"We are very fortunate. With the bricks falling in the classroom and the utility wire and pole being pulled down, we could have had serious injuries," Gale Yates, junior high principal, said.