Jackson and Overton County Emergency officials spent Friday assessing the damage caused by Thursday night’s tornado.
Overton County EMA Director Chris Masiongale said yard debris, fallen trees, and damaged houses witnessed across the county from the Putnam County line to Fentress County. Masiongale said currently the county has anywhere from 30-50 houses that were damaged by last night’s storm.
“Some that the resident had to leave and couldn’t stay there and some were it was minor,” Masiongale said “It was just a broad range of damage to different structures. A lot of barns and sheds, luckily no injuries.”
Jackson County EMA Public Information Officer Derek Woolbright said the Flynns Lick community saw minor damages while the Center Grove Area saw major damages.
“What we saw the most of was tree damage whether that is blocking roadways or doing damage to road signs and that kind of stuff,” Woolbright said. “But we did see at least two houses that had moderate damage to possibly being total losses.”
Woolbright said so far Jackson County has not had any injuries or fatalities. Woolbright and Masiongale said in both counties there are not any major road closures at this time.
“We had just a couple of small side roads just off of Seven Knobbs Road,” Woolbright said. “A couple of private drives that also had quite a bit of tree entanglement and I think the private drive owners of those were working to clear those this morning but as far as county roads or state roads to my knowledge currently they are all opened.”
“There are some roads that it’s going to take a while to get cleaned out,” Masiongale said. “I mean they are passible but they are not where they should be. Of course, the highway department is working on those as they can and of course, the state is taking care of the state roads.”
Woolbright said the county began assessing damage shortly after the storm passed through. Woolbright said luckily they have not discovered severe damage that they were not aware of Thursday night.
“To my knowledge, we have not found anything new,” Woolbright said. “Obviously we have had some additional reports from homeowners of minor damage here and there that maybe wasn’t visible in the dark last night but when it comes to significant damage to my knowledge currently we have not located any new significant damage this morning.”
Masiongale said a lot of the severe damage in Overton County was not discovered till early Friday morning.
“All the way from the edge of Putnam County and all the way up into Fentress County you know that’s a pretty good path,” Masiongale said. “And of course, it went on up into Morgan County and unfortunately they had more severe damage up there but yeah it was a lot more than what we had originally thought of.”
Masiongale said people often forget that when going out to assess and rescue people emergency responders have to be careful as well.
“It’s a dangerous job,” Masiongale said. “People don’t realize it but you have those trees that are down and you never know when a live wire may be in one or there is some type of hidden danger that you can’t see.”
Both counties are working with Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and National Weather Service crews to further assess damages.
