Storms damage city
Some flooding in Clintonville
By Erik Buchinger
A dangerous storm whipped through the Clintonville area leaving damage to trees, power lines, vehicles, houses and more on Saturday, July 20.
In addition, the amount of rainfall contributed to flooding in some areas in Clintonville.
“The most significant damage we’ve seen was a car under a large branch that really totaled the SUV,” Eveland said. “Other than that from what we’ve seen driving around, we were pretty lucky from a property damage aspect.”
Eveland described her experience during the storm.
“I was up in the kitchen with my mom in the basement,” Eveland said. “She starts hollering that the basement is flooding. Not long after that, the power went out. The flooded basement was a pain with what we have down there, so that’s not fun to deal with, but property-wise there were no trees down in our yard.”
Eveland said she did not have an exact number, but power was lost throughout most of the city.
“We got everybody up and running Saturday night,” Eveland said. “Some people were without power until Sunday with the exception of a few customers with issues on their end in which they would need to call an electrician to fix everything.”
Eveland said power was fully restored as of Sunday evening.
Clouds formed together in Marion. Photo courtesy of Kari Buss
“Honestly it was about making sure people were OK and that the staff stayed safe,” Eveland said. “Looking at the damage, I hope nobody has been hurt because it’s pretty significant, driving around with staff for assessment of problem areas and seeing how bad some of the roads were with trees and power lines.”
Eveland said there were no reports of any injuries.
“I was really pleased with how the staff came together within the departments that do not typically respond to these types of things,” Eveland said. “I was happy with the response of what needed to get done.”
Eveland said the city had limited staff and needed as many people as it could get to help on Saturday afternoon.
“Not anticipating how bad this was going to get, we had limited staff available,” Eveland said. “With something like this, it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. The ones who worked Saturday were really pushing to get things taken care of.”
Eveland said the only concern was communication, which the city hopes to improve on in the future.
“Communication needs to be a little bit better,” Eveland said. “We got multiple reports to the same issue with workers going to the same area, which made things a little frustrating for some staff. That’s something we need to look at as we evaluate our emergency response plan with a better flow of centralized communication.
“In the future, that’s something we need to talk about to have one place controlling it to see what needs to be addressed with what’s coming in and what needs to be fixed to flow a little bit better.”
Eveland said she was thankful for the patience of the Clintonville community.
“The community was great, and I am appreciative of the patience people displayed when dealing with the loss of power and understanding as severe as this was,” Eveland said. “I’m really thankful of the community as we tried to prioritize the issues and get everything back and running as quickly as possible.”
Eveland said she is not sure what the financial impact of the city will be as of Monday, July 22.
“We haven’t even begun to calculate that,” Eveland said. “At this point, we’re focused on getting everything done and under control. That’ll happen over the next few days for pulling that together. Some departments won’t have that information till next week.”
Because the storm was declared a state of emergency, Eveland said it should open up funds for the city to apply to mitigate financial impact costs for response and recovery.
The public works department will focus on brush pickup from the storm damage from Monday, July 22 through Friday, July 26.
“Our public works department will be doing a full-court press on brush pick up this week,” Eveland said.
During the week, only the brush requirements in the ordinance will not apply.
Residents who have the ability to transport brush to brush to the CAWS site at 300 Beacon Ave. in Clintonville can place the brush in the terrace area.
Public works employees will not be collecting from residents’ yards. After this week, the regular brush requirement will be reinstated.
