News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County officials are looking for land to place two memorial parks within the corridor of the March tornado.
Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said officials hope to erect the parks in memory of those lost in the the storm.
“We’d like to have possibly two,” Porter said. “One out in the county down in the area around Hensley Drive, in that area that was hardest hit. And maybe one inside the city that up on Broad in somewhere in the part that was hit in the city so bad.”
Porter said the county had a prospective piece of land, but the owner has decided to rebuild. He said any additional funds donated to the Tornado Relief Fund will help fund the building of the parks.
“We dispersed the last of payments out of that back in June,” Porter said. “Then we told everyone that anyone who donated past that cut-off, any funds going forward would be used toward those memorial parks.”
Although no land has been acquired, Porter said leaders have had some discussions about what they would like to see in the parks. However, he said all of that talk is preliminary.
“We’ve been doing a lot of talking internally, amongst ourselves, and looking for property,” Porter said. “But we haven’t got to the point yet of deciding what those are going to look like until we find some property.”
Porter said the design and layout of the parks will depend mostly on the size and layout of the property.
An EF-4 tornado struck the Highway 70 corridor in Putnam County in the early morning hours of March 3. 19 people were killed and 87 injured along an 8.39-mile path.
