News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Fentress County will purchase a generator for Clarkrange High School after the county received a $166,000 grant from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
Fentress County Commissioner Robert Cooper said the county will be matching the grant with a sum of $18,000. Cooper said the school’s gym built to serve as a storm shelter for the community. Cooper said the Clarkrange community has needed something like this for years.
“The grant is really going to help the school out there,” Cooper said. “The generator is big enough to run that entire building where the ROTC is at and they got a practice gym we can house several people in there in case of any kind of disaster, tornado, or such.”
Cooper said the county has seen several ice storms over the past couple of years that have caused people to be without power. Cooper said the generator will run on natural gas and will allow the shelter to house shelter seekers for an extended period of time.
“The generator is actually going to be run on natural gas which is supplied right there at the building,” Cooper said. “Hopefully everything will run good and natural gas will still be supplied when a lot of time we are not able to get diesel fuel or gasoline.”
Cooper said the county applied for the grant about three and a half years ago. Cooper said with the help of the county’s TEMA representative, County Executive Jimmy Johnson, and Emergency Management James Bilbrey they were able to keep the grant application active.
“It finally paid off,” Cooper said. “I mean it took a while. I was told with these federal grants sometimes it takes a year or longer sometimes longer than that to get them but we were blessed and we have been awarded this so we are looking forward to getting the ball rolling.”
Cooper said a concrete slab has already been poured for where the generator will be installed. He also said the building does not have a current generator but wiring was put in place when the building was built in 2017 for the anticipation of eventually installing a generator. Cooper said the grant requires the county to have the generator installed before the summer of 2026 but he expects the county will install it well before that deadline.
