Storms rage through Whitley, cause damage countwide

Damage from Tuesday’s storms in Whitley County appears similar to that of February’s straight-line 100 mph winds, but not quite as wide spread, according to initial assessments by Whitley County officials Tuesday evening.

Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. said that the western portion of the county sustained substantial damage, including a report of at least one barn that was been blown down in the Red Bird area.

"It seems like most of the damage they are talking about, the worst of it is in the western part of the county although we do have trees down on Ky. 92E and on Highway 904 as well," White said about 8 p.m. Tuesday.

He noted that the estimates are preliminary because officials haven’t been able to conduct a full investigation yet.
"It doesn’t seem like it was as wide spread as the storm we had a few months ago, but there is similar damage in areas," he said.

Power was out at the courthouse for over two hours, and the Whitley County 911 Dispatch Center operated off an emergency generator for over an hour.

Felicia Eaton, a 911 dispatcher on duty during Tuesday’s storm, said there was at least one tornado sighting from the Ryan’s Creek area.

She said officials were unable to call the Jackson Weather Service about it because computers went down at that time in addition to cell phone communications.

"We lost everything," she said.

Eaton estimates that 911 received 70 to 100 calls related to the storm and logged the information onto paper logs because of the outage.

A lot of the calls were from around Jellico Creek and the Ky. 92W area.

"Just basically it was the whole county," she said. "We had a lot of trees down and several EMS calls."

Eaton said that fortunately, most of the EMS calls appeared to have been limited to bumps, bruises and minor injuries of that nature.

In Corbin, trees were felled all over the city, a Public Works and Fire Department crews were out in force to clear roadways.

Several trees fell on Gordon Hill, including one that blocked the roadway completely near Jesson Street. A large tree fell on a house at the corner of Fifth and Oak Streets causing minor damage.
Trees blocked Barton Mill road for a time.

Corbin City Utilities Commission General Manager Ron Herd said crews from CUC worked frantically to remove trees from some power lines, but that most of the problems with power outages came from the fact that a main transmission line from Kentucky Utilities was dead. Many of the area’s municipal energy utilities purchase power from KU. Herd said about 9,000 electric customers in London and Corbin were without power for a couple hours Tuesday.

Trees fell on power lines on Corn Creek Road in Rockholds and blocked other roadways in Woodbine and around the county.