207 Whitley homes damaged by wind

Click here to see a photo gallery of local storm damage

Local officials hope to know by the end of the week whether Williamsburg and Whitley County will qualify for state and federal disaster assistance in connection with winds last Wednesday that reached speeds of up to 100 mph.

Eight damage assessment teams working Thursday and Friday determined that a total of 207 residences countywide were damaged by the storm, according to figures the fiscal court has submitted to the state.
Of those damaged, all but 43 of the homes were still considered habitable. 25 of the uninhabitable homes suffered minor damage, 16 major damage, and two were totally destroyed, the report noted.

Williamsburg was the hardest hit area. 121 out of the 207 damaged homes were inside the city. Of those 113 suffered minor damage and eight had major damage, Williamsburg Mayor Roddy Harrison said Monday afternoon.

“That’s quite a few for our small area,” Harrison noted. “We got hit pretty hard and had a lot of damage, but the good news is that no one we know of got hurt.

“This is the main thing. You can put a house back together. I’m just real proud of the way everybody responded to this.”

At the Williamsburg Independent School, winds bent the scoreboard back until it was almost parallel to the ground.

At the University of the Cumberlands, high winds tore off the side psychology building.
All across Williamsburg and in various place in Whitley County large trees were uprooted damaging homes and vehicles.

Harrison estimated that at least two-thirds of Williamsburg was without power in the wake of the storm.
Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. estimated that the storm knocked out power for 40 to 45 percent of county residents. Power was finally restored to all homes Saturday.

In the wake of the storm, Harrison and White issued emergency declarations.

“It was certainly a major windstorm, and the biggest I have dealt with since I have been in this office. Williamsburg seemed to take a big brunt of the damage,” White noted Thursday afternoon.

“There have been numerous people with severe damage to their homes. Roads were blocked. We had EMS crews and other crews out until the middle of the night, and in some cases all night trying to be of assistance anywhere we could be.”

Calculating the damage

Officials are still calculating the monetary damage of last week’s storm, and hope to have figures by the end of the week. Things such as actual damage to structures, overtime pay for emergency responders, and costs to cut and remove trees all have to be calculated.

These figures are needed in order to see if the county qualifies for state or federal assistance.
“There is a threshold that has to be met by the county. I think we are going to get that threshold. Then there is a threshold for the state that has to be met as well. It is roughly $5 million for the state,” said Jerry Rains, Area 11 Manager for Kentucky Division of Emergency Management.

A total of five counties, including Whitley and Knox, were damaged by the windstorm.

“The push right now is to get those dollar amounts and figures from those other counties tabulated,” Rains noted.

Not a tornado

A three-person team from the National Weather Service was in Williamsburg for much of the day Thursday and toured some of the hardest hit areas for about two hours before determining that the damage was caused by straight-line winds at speeds of 70 to 100 mph rather than a tornado.

Brian Schoettmer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, said the storm caused a great deal of wind damage all over Southeastern Kentucky.

Williamsburg was among the hardest hit areas, he noted.

“This just shows the power of straight line winds. The warnings need to be taken seriously,” Schoettmer added. “This shows straight-line winds can be as damaging as a weak tornado. This is why severe thunderstorm warnings need to be taken just as seriously as tornado warnings.”

Sure felt like a tornado

Despite the national weather service determination that a tornado wasn’t responsible for the damage, some local residents reported spotting funnel shaped clouds during the storm.

“We saw the funnel cloud actually over there in the mountains,” said Cemetery Road resident Stacey Ramirez. “Just as I spotted the funnel cloud, they were saying on the news for everybody to take cover in northern Williamsburg.

“I looked out the door to see how bad it was, and we saw something drop down in that little field over there and it just came through. By then I was in the bathroom with my kids taking shelter. It lasted 30 to 45 seconds, nothing more than that.”

When she came outside after the storm to assess the damage, Ramirez remembers thinking, “Oh my Lord, it was a tornado and we lived through it.”

Williamsburg Public Affairs Officer Shawn Jackson said that when the storm struck, he was riding in a cruiser with Chief Wayne Bird on US25W going toward Ky. 92W on the bridge.

“The car actually started lifting up a little bit, and it started shaking the bridge. At that time, it was a pretty scary situation for the Chief and myself,” Jackson said. “When it hit, it hit hard. It hit quick, and it was gone, but the damage was massive.”

Jackson said he observed some circular motion of the wind during the store.

“There was some circular movement in the air. The wind was blowing tremendously. I thought it was going to lift the car over the bridge,” he said.

Jackson said damage was easily visible on 10th Street and West Main Street, and then 911 started getting flooded with calls.

“It’s probably the most damage that this town has seen in several years,” Jackson noted.
Harrison said he implemented a 9 p.m. curfew last Wednesday due to the storm in order to reduce traffic so emergency responders could get through. The entire Williamsburg Police Department worked until about 4:30 a.m. Thursday due to the outage.

Williamsburg police communications were made more difficult by the fact that their radio tower was demolished by the wind.

Harrison noted that the fire department responded to nine fire calls in 15 minutes, most of which were caused by power lines being down.

Scary moments

“I heard a huge bang, crash. It was loud,” noted Highland Park resident Wilma Faulkner, who had a large tree completely uprooted in her front yard among other damage.

“Then I heard the second one that hit the house. It made a huge crash. It was a very, very loud noise. It was pretty scary. We are very grateful that everybody was OK.”

Prior to the crashing trees, Faulkner said she had no idea that the storm was that bad.
At Charles Rains house just across the street from Faulkner, trees were uprooted and struck his truck and the corner of his home.

“At first we heard the siren downtown go off. The storm started just as soon as the siren went off. We didn’t have time to take any shelter or anything. I looked out and these trees were just falling everywhere,” Rains noted.

Lessons learned

Harrison said that people needing electricity to power oxygen machines or other equipment for medical purposes, should get a letter from their doctor about the need and send that in with their monthly bill.

This way their names will be placed near the top of the priority list when it comes time to restore power.
Last week’s storm knocked out power to the wastewater treatment and water plants for nearly 20 hours.

While the wastewater treatment plant had back-up generators for the plant and pump stations, the water plant didn’t.

Harrison said the Mt. Morgan area suffered water outages early Thursday prior to power being restored to the water plant.

City leaders have already met with FEMA officials, and will be applying for grant funding to get generators to the water treatment plant and its pump stations. If grant funds aren’t available, the city will purchase the generators itself, Harrison noted.