Last week’s derecho storm was one of the worst weather-related incidents that Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams has seen.

Williams tells Raccoon Valley Radio he was contacted by Greene County Emergency Management Coordinator Dennis Morlan before the storm entered the county from the west that Monday morning. He says he sent three deputies to the western county line to monitor the storm. Williams explains how he managed the situation moments before the storm came into the county and immediately afterwards.

“We realized very quickly that we need to get some (weather) sirens sounding, just due to the wind speeds and damages that we were seeing over on the west part of the county. We tried to follow it across the best we could (and) all of the fire departments were paged out prior to the storm actually hitting any city. After the storm had moved through, (we were) coordinating with all of the fire departments that were out to get streets opened as quickly as we could in case we had an emergency of some sort.” 

Williams notes the Churdan Fire Department helped Jefferson Fire Department, and Paton Fire Department helped Rippey Fire Department with opening streets from tree debris, while working with the various city crews. Williams describes his deputies’ efforts in the rural portions of the county after the storm.

“A couple of us had chainsaws and we went and cut our way through gravel roads and stuff to make sure that the campgrounds like Squirrel Hollow (and) everybody was alright. And then we just continued all day long with helping to get the trees off the roads as best we could using tow ropes and pulling them off to the side or chainsaws. And we basically just spent the next 24 hours covering arcing power lines.”

Williams appreciates how all public entities worked to help each other.