PEPPER PIKE, Ohio -- The National Weather Service confirmed it was a tornado that tore through the Ursuline College campus early Saturday, demolishing the gymnasium, damaging at least three other buildings, uprooting and snapping trees and strewing debris over a wide area.

"We feel blessed that no one was killed, no one was hurt," the school's president, Sister Diana Stano, said as she surveyed damage Saturday afternoon.

The weather service said the tornado, classified as an EF 1 on a 0-to-5 scale and packing winds of 110 miles per hour, developed northwest of the school about 3:30 a.m.

It downed trees at the Landerbrook complex off Interstate 271 and along Cedar Road, swirled through the Ursuline quad and ripped southeast along Lander Road to Shaker Boulevard, damaging roofs and leaving a trail of limbs.

Worst damage was to Ursuline's O'Brien Athletic Center. The storm lifted the roof, and a wall collapsed in the gym, and leaving bricks and heavy support beams dangling.

Stano said structural engineers will determine if the building can be salvaged.

Ursuline was accepted as an NCAA Division II school only last week, a distinction for a women's college, Stano said. "Now we don't have a place to play."

Summer camps at the school were canceled for next week. A decision on summer academic classes for the week will be made Sunday.

Tornado History