Storms miss area |
“I am not sorry to tell you I don’t have any news for you,” Lincoln County Emergency Management Coordinator Don Gilliam said Saturday morning to a reporter asking if Friday’s stormy weather had produced any significant damage.
It was the same across The Advocate-Messenger’s entire coverage area the day after multiple tornado warnings were issued in Boyle, Mercer, Casey, Garrard and Lincoln counties: hail, high water, some downed trees but no major fallout from the storms that killed at least 19 people and injured more than 300 across Kentucky Friday evening.
“We had a few trees down, there was some golf ball-sized hail reported in Junction City and the ‘Welcome to Junction’ sign blew over, but that was about it,” said Lt. Jim¿Harris of the Boyle County Fire Department, who manned the emergency operations center set up in Danville. “We got real lucky. Everything just missed us.”
David East, deputy director of Garrard County Emergency Management, said about 70 homes and businesses in the county, most of them in the Paint Lick and Cartersville communities, sustained minor hail damage.
“We did receive reports of trees down throughout the county and some loss of electricity,” East said. “With the heavy rain, we did have some roads flooded initially but none remained closed after the water receded.”
Gilliam said shelters were opened in Stanford, Ottenheim, Moreland and Kings Mountain. About 30 people took refuge in the shelter at Kings Mountain, he said, but he didn’t know if the other shelters were used.
“I’d say they were. We had a lot of calls about shelters when those storms started to hit,” he said.
