Tornado Lifts Roof Off Sea Girt National Guard Training Camp Building

SEA GIRT, NJ — As the tornado that touched down in Sea Girt moved out to sea Saturday, it heavily damaged a New Jersey National Guard Training Center warehouse for a residential youth program there.

The National Weather Service Monday categorized the tornado as an EF-2, meaning winds of 110-120 mph, and its force was certainly felt at the Training Center building.

The state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs confirmed that the building totaling about 10,000 square feet was severely damaged on Saturday night. The site is located at the Training Center at Sea Girt Avenue and Stockton Lake, said National Guard Deputy Major Amelia Thatcher.

But, fortunately, the barracks where young people in the Youth ChalleNGe Academy live was not damaged and all students are safe, officials said. Their classrooms are fine too, National Guard officials said Monday.

"Classes are going as planned," said Earnest Williams, director of the New Jersey Youth ChalleNGe Academy said on Monday.

He added that the youth barracks was about a quarter mile away from the damaged warehouse.

He said it was the only building damaged at the Training Camp.

The National Weather Service, in an updated report of the area said the damage was most likely due to "straight-line winds of 70 to 80 mph."

The weather service said the tornado, moving east/southeast from the Howell area, made "a brief touchdown" on the training site, most likely forming over Stockton Lake.

The roof of the building was "lifted and thrown eastward. The debris was lofted and strewn for about 250 yards to the east/northeast."

A tree was uprooted, all in a pattern indicative of a tornado, the weather service said.

Elsewhere in the area, the weather service reported that a small bleacher was overturned at the Manasquan Little League fields, about 600 yards southeast of the Youth ChalleNGe Academy.

The academy currently has a class of 40 cadets, male and female, who are considered at risk for high school graduation, so they can choose to attend the academy. It is a 22-week residential program, Williams said.

Youth can graduate there with a GED or return to high school. Williams said it is a quasi-military program, with students up at 5 a.m. to begin their day.

High winds tore off the roof and toppled the chimney of the academy's supply and storage building, which did not contain classrooms or billeting, officials said.

Williams said National Guard Training Center personnel are conducting assessments of the campus and were onsite on Monday.

"We are so thankful that all our personnel and cadets are safe," said Williams. "However we lost a lot of materials and equipment for our program, such as the computers we had assembled for the cadets' new computer lab."

The mission of the New Jersey Youth ChalleNGe Academy is to "train and mentor disengaged youth so they become responsible and productive citizens of their community, state, and country," Major Agneta E. Murnan of the National Guard explained in a statement.

In partnership with a mentor, cadets receive continued guidance and support during their one-year post-residential phase immediately following graduation, she said.

For more information about the program, visit https://njyca.org/.