This caused mayor Gene Zick to step back and assess the city’s emergency preparedness.
Zick said that the emergencies generator that supplied power to the fire and police departments worked just fine, but he would like to see that same generator configured to also supply power to city hall in case of another outage.
“I don’t even think it was working at half its capacity with the police and fire departments,” Zick said.
Other generators weren’t quite as efficient.
Zick said the generator at the city’s sewer plant nearly ran out of fuel and employees were getting ready to scramble to find a way to get more for it.
“Thank God we got the power on when we did,” Zick said. “This really points out a lot of issues that we have to look at.”
Zick has asked for city personnel to critique the issues they had during the storm
“We’re going to figure out what’s high on the priority list and work from there,” Zick said.
Logan County was one of 61 Kentucky counties fall under a federal emergency declaration which could mean some federal money could be used for improvements to the city’s emergency infrastructure.
The county also was forced to close its offices on Wednesday because of the lack of electricity.
Judge Executive Logan Chick said the county was forced to move around some of it generators in order to keep everything operating as much as possible.
“I don’t think anything has ever happened like this,” Chick said. “It made it rough operating the ECC (Emergency Communications Center), but they did a good job.”
The county also had the massive job of clearing roadways that were blocked by fallen trees.
“Tuesday and Wednesday, we just trouble shot and tried to get the roads open as best we could. We’re having to do the same thing today,” Chick said Thursday. “We’re just trying to open the roads as best we can.”
Most of the damage was caused by ice that came before snow started to fall Wednesday morning.
There was little snow accumulation, which could have made things even worse.
“We were lucky that it stopped snowing when it did,” Zick said. “We sort of lucked out in some ways.”
Rodney Harkleroad, the emergency management director for Logan County, said everyone did a great job coming together in the face of the winter storm.
“It was really a group effort,” Harkleroad said. “All things considered, it went pretty good.”
Both Chick and Harkleroad said north Logan County was the hardest hit.
“From Russellville up to Lake Malone area it was pretty bad,” Harkleroad
As of Thursday afternoon, three Logan County roads were still closed because of high water from the storm.
They included: KY 3201 (Coopertown Quality Road),
KY 1153 (Beechland Road) and KY 107 (Deerlick Road.)
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