News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Jackson and Overton County officials said the cleanup continues from last Thursday’s tornado touchdowns.
Overton County EMA Director Chris Masiongale said the official damage numbers showed 51 houses damaged or destroyed. Masiongale said County Executive Steven Barlow issued a declaration of emergency to keep the state helping in the Hanging Limb area. Masiongale said the cleanup has gone smoothly but there is still work to be done.
“As far as the road goes and the road department I just spoke to them Monday and they said it would take another week at least a full week to be able to get all of that debris off of the roadway and out,” Masiongale said. “So no it’s not all completely done yet.”
Jackson County EMA Public Information Officer Derek Woolbright said the official numbers showed two damaged houses with one of them being a total loss and the other one still in question. Woolbright said the damage cleanup in Jackson County has been completed.
“For the most part all of our damaged areas as far as what is publicly accessible is completely cleaned up,” Woolbright said. “we do still have some private properties that have some trees down that the homeowners are sort of working at their own pace to clean up.”
Masiongale said he is waiting to hear back from TEMA as the counties could receive disaster relief funding from FEMA if the counties meet an estimated $8 million in damage. Masiongale said the funding would be extremely beneficial for rebuilding all areas that suffered from the tornado.
“The county highway department, the electric company, the telephone company, The state DOT, and all of those have got skin in the game,” Masiongale said. “It costs a lot of money to get out and work overtime during the storms and of course the continued effort to clean and get all of that taken care of. So getting that money back from the federal government is a blessing to the tax base of every county that might be affected.”
Woolbright said the funding would be a big boost to many homeowners in Jackson County.
“You look at these private property owners and some of them you know obviously with a couple of residential structures that were damaged significantly,” Woolbright said. “That’s a large financial burden to those folks and then on top of that you do have some infrastructure that was affected in ways of electric poles, telephone poles, road tiles, culverts, and things like that.”
Masiongale said normally TEMA would have responded by now but expects to hear from them within the coming days. Masiongale and Woolbright both said they wanted to thank several volunteer organizations from across the Upper Cumberland for lending a helping hand with the cleanup. Masiongale said lending a helping hand is the nature of the Upper Cumberland.
