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COUNTY JUDGE: STORM DAMAGE LIMITED TO SMALL AREA OF COUNTY

Friday, October 30, 2009 10:48 AM CDT

Jefferson County Judge Mike Holcomb said he and county road crews were out all night Thursday night into Friday morning, but other than trees down along Ridgway Road, one of them across the roof of a house, the damage to the Walmart Supercenter on South Olive Street, and flooded roads, the county weathered the storm pretty well.

“We’ve just had so much rain, the water has had no place to go,” Holcomb said Friday morning. “We went out on Rosswood Road and some of the other county roads and we’ve had no reports of other problems so far.”

Holcomb said he was not aware of any injuries or other structural damage as a result of the storm.

Karen Quarles, interim director of the county Office of Emergency Management, said that according to the National Weather Service, the damage was the result of straight line winds, rather than a tornado.

The rain gauge at the Grider Field Airport recorded 3.56 inches of rain at 7:25 a.m., and Quarles said that was a 24-hour reading.

“The damage was pretty well confined to that one area from First Assembly of God Church on Ridgway Road to Walmart,” she said. “There was nothing behind the church or behind Walmart.”

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