{"id":190836,"date":"2026-03-13T23:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T23:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190836\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T23:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T23:05:11","slug":"national-weather-service-says-tornado-hit-jacksonville-american-legion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190836\/","title":{"rendered":"National Weather Service says tornado hit Jacksonville American Legion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; Meteorologists from the National Weather Service say a tornado hit the American Legion post in Jacksonville yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The building on Broadhurst Road was destroyed by the storm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Fortunately, no one was inside the building at the time, though the building manager was on his way there to prepare for 120-130 people expected for bingo later that evening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Weather Service says a brief EF-0 tornado, with peak winds of 85 miles per hour, caused the damage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Meteorologists say the tornado was on the ground for less than 800 feet and its path was just 60 feet wide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Legion Commander Steve Shortt says they\u2019ve already reached out to their insurance company and plan to rebuild on the property.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Shortt says all events going forward have been cancelled, including tonight\u2019s 80 anniversary dinner for the post. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 22,000 square foot facility was built in 1981 and has a tax value of $820,590.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"The building was flattened this afternoon.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773443111_243_NQRSTLGZMNGAPOFEBXSDLANCFQ.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>The building was flattened this afternoon.(Submitted photo)<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; Meteorologists from the National Weather Service say a tornado hit the American Legion post&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,729],"class_list":["post-190836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}