Five years after Hurricane Ike

by Matt Hughes

J-E News Editor

Saturday will mark the fifth anniversary of the 2008 windstorm that blew through Webster County, causing widespread damage.

Five years later we take a look back at the damge left in the wake of Hurricane Ike with the stories and photos that appeared in The Journal-Enterprise at the time.

From the September 18, 2008 edition of The Journal-Enterprise

“Sunday Storm Hammers County”

by DENNIS BEARD

J-E News Editor

Damaged railroad crossing guardrails, uprooted trees and broken branches, roof shingles on the lawn, and massive power outages were just a few of the results of high winds that swept through the region on Sunday.

Webster County Emergency Management Agency Director Stan Nall said as the winds moved through Dixon, local officials tracked their speed at as high as 64 miles per hour, and local meteorologist Wayne Hart reported the winds held “sustained” speeds of about 40 miles per hour, with some gusts reaching as high as 80 miles per hour over a one to three hour period on Sunday. The winds were produced as part of Hurricane Ike, and Hart said the eye of the hurricane passed over Flora, IL, in the southern part of the state.

Closer to home, massive power outages were the most noticeable result of the strong winds, with reports from Kentucky Utilities of more than 75,000 customers in the company’s service area, and another 1,500 Kenergy customers in Webster County alone losing power. (Exact figures for Webster County weren’t available.)

On Tuesday, Kenergy spokesperson Lisa Owen said about 1,300 customers in Webster County still didn’t have power restored, and added that the company is now in what she called “an extended outage situation.”

“It will be the latter part of the week before Kenergy will have 100 percent restoration in our service territory which covers 14 counties in western Kentucky,” she wrote in an e-mail reply to The J-E.

When asked how many of those in Webster County without power were included in that potential delay, Owen said she couldn’t be specific about repair progress.

As many as 500 Providence customers also lost power, but Providence Public Works Supervisor David May said city crews worked quickly on Sunday to restore as many as possible. He said as of Tuesday, he didn’t know of any areas that hadn’t been reconnected to the city’s power supply, or whether there were still any locations without power inside the city limits.

Slaughters Elementary sustained roof damage as a result of the winds, and maintenance crews were busy throughout Webster County as well as the region cutting down and removing broken limbs, repairing power lines, and removing fallen debris from the highway.

Nall said a CSX train struck a tree that fell over on the railroad but that, luckily, the accident didn’t cause the train to derail. Other trains that were scheduled to use the rail line were delayed by up to four hours while the debris was cleared, he said.

Webster County Water District had also been using a back-up generator it rented to continue water production until power was restored to the plant in Onton, which reportedly occurred sometime late Monday afternoon. However, it wasn’t clear whether the generator was still in operation on Tuesday, and Water District Superintendent Paul Lashbrooke couldn’t be reached for comment.

Nall said he hoped the incident would serve as a warning to people to “be prepared as much as possible” in case of a much more severe storm or disaster later on.

(J-E photos by Charlie Hust and Kristie Dunbar)