Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for May 9, 2009 FRIDAY'S STORM

At least two Cairo teachers had significant damage to their homes in the violent storm that struck north of us yesterday.

Below are a couple of stories from the Southern Illinoisan about the storm...

Blown away

By Becky Malkovich and Caleb Hale
The Southern

Winds in excess of 100 mph lashed the region Friday, leaving one dead, widespread damage, thousands without electricity, rare city curfews enacted and a massive clean-up ahead.

One person died in Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, the result of a head injury sustained in the storm, Southern Illinois Healthcare spokeswoman Rosslind Rice said. No other information about the victim was available Friday night.

Two weather systems moved through the area midday, the first producing relatively harmless rain, thunder and lightning. The second system brought an early spring mix of strong winds, possible tornadoes and flash floods into the area.

“But no locusts,” meteorologist Kelly Hooper of the National Weather Service in Paducah, said Friday during a brief moment of levity on the busy weather day. “There was certainly damage across all counties in Southern Illinois. Electric lines and trees down, windows blown out of homes and cars, structural damage to many, many businesses and residences. There is just a lot of widespread damage.”

Particularly hard hit were Williamson and Jackson counties and the communities of Carterville, Herrin, Marion, Johnston City, Carbondale and Murphysboro.

A number of people were trapped in homes and buildings in Jackson and Williamson counties, Hooper said.

Rice noted while hospitals in the area saw storm-related injuries, most of those came after the storm was over, when people were attempting to clean up.

Hooper said NWS teams will swarm the area today to survey the damage so that specific causes for the destruction could be determined.

“We’ll be surveying damage, finding wind speeds and intensities. We’ve had reports of tornadoes and lots of flooding, including flash floods that were short lived,” he said. “We are going to have a lot to survey.”

Roughly 68,000 customers lost power and more than 100 natural gas leaks were reported in the wake of the storm, Ameren Illinois Utilities spokesman Leigh Morris said.

The company has dispatched 700 workers in a restoration effort, but with at least 11 power transmission lines down, officials have no timeline when the power may be back on, Morris said.

“This is a massive, massive damage that was done,” he said.

Ameren is opening a customer service center at the Illinois Centre Mall in Marion near the Sears store this morning. Regular business hours will run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day until further notice, Morris said.

Clean-up efforts could be hampered by periods of rain today and tomorrow, Hooper said, although no severe weather is anticipated.

Link to Original Story

Johnston City among hardest hit communities

By Becky Malkovich
The Southern

Downed trees, limbs, roofs, shingles and power lines littered the streets and yards of Franklin County and northeast Williamson County, with Johnston City and West Frankfort seeming to suffer the most damage.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the wind blow like it did for 20 to 30 minutes straight,” A.D. Schutt of Schutt’s Baseball Card Shop in Johnston City said. “There are tons of trees and power lines down all over town.”

Schutt’s shop on Broadway Street saw no damage from the storm, but evidence of the wind’s power was everywhere.

Pieces of the metal roof of a lumber yard were scattered randomly over a couple of blocks while one large piece flew into the window of Jim Mitchell’s Modern Woodmen Fraternal Finance office on Broadway. Glass and water rained in through the window.

Schutt’s granddaughter was at school during the storm.

“They moved us into the hallways and said we had to stay down,” Kaitlyn Schutt, 14, said.

“When it got quiet, we could hear stuff in the ceiling rattling. It was pretty scary.”

The school sustained some damage during the storm, as did businesses and residences all over town.

Motorists heading north out of Johnston City on Illinois 37 were surprised by a detour near West Frankfort. Trees blocked both lanes of the highway, sending drivers to a detour through a residential area.

West Frankfort homes and businesses were also affected by the storm, with windows busted out and roofs missing large pieces or completely torn off.

Most side streets in the city were flooded. Other streets had water cascading across, worrying motorists who feared being swept into ditches or fields.

Other Franklin County towns including Benton took hits from the storm. Benton’s North Main Street was closed when water flooded a block-long area.