Madison County residents assess costs; leaders address why FM alerts failed
RICHMOND, Ky (WTVQ)- As residents assess damage in Sunday’s storms, now emergency management leaders are tabulating the costs.
“The tops of the trees are gone. I mean, everything around us looks destroyed. The car, the windshield shattered. The hail damage, it’s all over it. It’s in pretty bad shape. But nothing that cant be fixed,” says Judah Ison of Richmond.
Ison and his wife Trish live on Hunter Lane, where strong winds, hail and rain damaged homes and cars. They estimate thousands of dollars or more in damages. Trish had just paid her car off one week ago.
County officials say this is only beginning of determining the full costs.
“There’s really at this point, based on what we know, there’s no way to know. We have no idea. The days and the weeks ahead will really warrant what those damages really total up to,” says Jill Williams, the Madison County Deputy Judge Executive.
Williams says road crews have been responding to calls for downed trees and power lines and blocked roads. But thankfully, to her knowledge, no reports of injuries.
Emergency leaders are also addressing why the new alert FM receivers did not sound as expected during the intense storms last night. Madison County Emergency Management partners with the National Weather Service in Louisville.
When the weather service issues a warning to residents in Madison County, the alert should be distributed to t.v,, radio, cell phones, and alert FM receivers. However, emergency management says the alert FM’s did not activate.
Williams says they rely on a feed from the NWS to make them go off and the decision is not made locally to make the FM alerts go off.
“Our teams were watching the radar and watching for that feed to come through. Kept watching and said ‘hey, they’re still not going off.’ We have ability to override the siren system within the county, which is what we did. We activated those sirens at the direction of emergency management director because we knew that was important,” says Williams.
County leaders are now working with the National Weather Service to determine what happened.
She says they don’t have a resolution at this time and ask that citizens have patience as they investigate those issues.
“We have notified obviously the National Weather Service that that feed did not come to us as we felt it should have,” she continued.
Williams says the NWS is expected to provide more information on the severity of the damage by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, the Isons say they’re thankful everyone is okay. They say the community is stepping up to help.
“It’s amazing. God’s outpouring of love. So, it’s definitely a blessing. Its good to have good neighbors that are here and try to pitch in to help people that can,” says Trish Ison.
To report damage- the Madison County Emergency Management says to call their non-emergency number at 859-624-4787..
