{"id":394319,"date":"2026-09-09T02:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T02:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/394319\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T02:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T02:27:15","slug":"lightning-strikes-st-petersburg-catholic-high-school-gym-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/394319\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning strikes St. Petersburg Catholic High School gym"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Brief<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Lightning struck the gymnasium at St. Petersburg Catholic High School, causing smoke to rise from the roof.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">All students and staff are safe, and emergency responders are working to control damage at the scene.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Parents can pick up students in front of the school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. &#8211; A lightning strike hit the gymnasium at <a data-ylk=\"slk:St. Petersburg;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/us\/fl\/pinellas\/st-petersburg\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">St. Petersburg<\/a> Catholic High School, sending smoke pouring from the building&#8217;s roof.<\/p>\n<p>St. Petersburg school lightning strike<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">What we know<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg reported emergency crews are on scene at St. Petersburg Catholic High School after a lightning strike hit the gym roof.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">No injuries were reported, and all students and faculty inside the building are safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/wtvt_fox_local_articles_521\/e771fedc0083ae58f8f0d5c55cc46439.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Allison Munden, the director of communications with the Diocese of St. Petersburg, explained that the damage is likely contained to the roof of the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Active fire department response<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Dig deeper<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The communications director also mentioned while this did happen after school hours, there were a lot of students still on campus due to the heavy rain in the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">She explained that there&#8217;s obviously smoke and water damage, and they are assessing the situation when it comes to future practices and games.<\/p>\n<p>Diocese response<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">What they&#8217;re saying<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Lightning, you never think it could happen to you, or never struck your building,&#8221; Munden explained. &#8220;You have to take things seriously, remain sheltered and covered, and following city protocol is very important.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Catholic Diocese of Saint Petersburg asked the community to support those responding to the emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Please pray for our firefighters, first responders and the entire school community,&#8221; the diocese shared in a public statement.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/wtvt_fox_local_articles_521\/561a2bba3c0f86eae54f935e1480a6e6.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Source<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The information in this story was gathered from the Catholic Diocese of Saint Petersburg, which provided updates via a social media statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief Lightning struck the gymnasium at St. Petersburg Catholic High School, causing smoke to rise from the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[157310,62333,21137,90029,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-394319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-catholic-diocese-of-saint-petersburg","tag-diocese-of-st-petersburg","tag-emergency-responders","tag-lightning-strike","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394319","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=394319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}