St. Joseph County recovering following 2 tornadoes

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s severe weather across St. Joseph and Branch counties, a monumental clean-up effort started as daylight broke Wednesday.

Meanwhile, county and local officials canvassed St. Joseph County’s hardest-hit areas – Mendon, Nottawa, Colon and Leonidas townships – also on Wednesday morning to gauge the degree of damage caused by what has now been confirmed as two tornadoes that touched down in the northeast quadrant of the county.

St. Joseph County Emergency Management Director Erin Goff said in her four-plus years on the job, this week’s storm was the worst natural disaster she has seen in the county.

“We’ve had tornadoes and we’ve had straight-line winds, but this is by far the biggest weather incident we’ve had in my four years here,” she said. “I hope it is the biggest one I’ll ever see.”

She said Centreville, Mendon, Leonidas and Colon were specifically the hardest hit communities in the county. Those locations and surrounding areas sustained extensive property and tree damage. Students in Colon Community Schools and Centreville Public Schools, in fact, had the day off Wednesday due to power outages.

Confirming what Undersheriff Jason Bingaman stated late Tuesday, Goff said two people suffered non-life-threatening injuries that were storm related and one person who needed medical assistance unrelated to the storm.

Wednesday’s work started early and involved a focus on utility restoration. Goff said having electricity is a critical and essential step in the recovery process, so that component was a high priority. Next, roads would be surveyed and cleared where necessary. Then, Goff said the focus shifts to people whose homes suffered damage and are in need of a temporary residence.

“The other component (Wednesday) is to allocate resources to make sure that if we’ve identified a need, we have the ability to get a resource for it,” she said. “We’ll be doing damage assessments through the end of the week just to make sure we’re capturing what that damage looks like so we can report it to the state.”

County Commission Chairman Ken Malone on Tuesday evening declared a local state of emergency and Gov. Whitmer followed suit. Goff said local resources are being used to the fullest possible extent, and response and recovery elements of the county’s emergency-operations plan have been activated.

She said an accurate and thorough damage assessment is a big deal because federal dollars are at stake.

“One of the reasons we do these damage assessments is to get a feel for the scope and enormity for how much damage there is and losses,” Goff said.

Tuesday’s storm was not a surprise, she said, but the magnitude was impossible to fathom as she watched radar and kept an eye on it as it approached St. Joseph County.

A storm of such widespread impact provides an occasion to test the benefit of frequent trainings and simulations with area agencies and other responders, Goff noted.

“When it’s for real, and you have to do the call-outs and have those emergency center briefings, you’re glad you’ve practiced them so when they happen, everybody responds according to the assignment and it’s pretty seamless,” she said. “I was reminded once again Tuesday that we have an amazing team in this county. We are a small county but we have an abundance of resources and people who are willing to help … this job is the epitome of a collaborative effort and that effort showed up strong Tuesday.”

National Weather Service personnel were expected to be in St. Joseph County Wednesday to determine wind speed, width, path, width and other statistics.

Meanwhile, Colon Township Fire Chief Matt Overholt spent Wednesday surveying hard-hit areas. He said there was no shortage of destruction.

“I’d say about 100 houses (damaged) would be a fair estimate,” he noted. “It’s worse than I imagined. I got up at 7 (Wednesday) morning and knew I’d see some damage, but it was way greater than what I thought.”

Overholt said he was on the scene at damaged or destroyed homes on Orla Engle Road, Colon Road, Deno and Brandt roads. He said silos were toppled and roofs torn from barns at locations on Brandt Road, near the Colon and Leonidas township line.

“We pretty much went house by house – it’s mostly Amish houses in that area – just to check in, make sure everyone is OK and if they needed anything,” Overholt said. “We’re letting people know the fire station is being used as a center for anyone who needs to charge their phone, hang out … we have water and all that stuff, too.”

In addition, Overholt said he was able to survey large parts of the township thanks to the use of drones.

He said he happened to be in Centreville and witnessed buildings on Nottawa Gas property sustain damage, as a pole barn collapsed and sections of roof were torn off the Nottawa Gas building itself.

“It’s my understanding that there were very few injuries, nobody died and you have to look at this as it could have been a lot worse,” Overholt said. “We had a family on Driftwood Drive that had to get put up for the night because their house is unlivable at the moment, but everyone was safe.”

This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: St. Joseph County recovering following 2 tornadoes