Folks in south-central Pulaski had a bit of a wild Sunday afternoon as a major storm ripped through – and ripped up – trees and utility poles in the area.
But the good news, according to Emergency Management Director Don Franklin, was that there were no injuries reported in Pulaski during Sunday’s storm system.
Franklin did say there was extensive damage to trees throughout the Somerset and Ferguson area, many of which damaged utility poles.
One house in the Seven Oaks area required assistance from the Ferguson Fire Department, Franklin said, because a tree brought down live wires across a yard, trapping the family inside their home.
Franklin said a transformer fell directly onto the family’s car, and that the lines were still live after being brought down. “The trees were actually burning,” he said.
Thankfully, Ferguson Fire was able to remove the family through a backdoor and transport them to a family member’s home for shelter, he said. South Kentucky RECC were also able to cut off power to the lines, preventing further damage.
Franklin also confirmed that several utility poles were downed along Parkers Mill Road, although in those cases the lines turned out to be telephone-related rather than electric.
“But as far as I’m concerned, if it’s a wire, it’s electricity, and I don’t want anybody taking any chances,” he said.
Franklin did say he and Somerset Fire personnel stayed out with the poles until they could be cleaned up, because several of them were laying across the roadway.
RECC crews were busy across their entire service area, with reports that more than 20% of Pulaskians were without power, and many more problems in neighboring counties.
As of noon Monday, RECC’s Facebook page said linemen had found more than 40 broken poles throughout their 11-county area, with most of the damage concentrated within Pulaski, Cumberland, McCreary, Clinton, Russell, Wayne and Pickett Counties.
As of 5 p.m. Monday, RECC’s online outage map showed that there was still 12.3% of Pulaski customers without power, compared to Pickett County, which had 99.1% of its RECC customers without power.
RECC also stated that crews from as far away as Mississippi and Alabama were in the area assisting.
“With the severity of damage, some members could be without power for several days. Members that require a medical device may want to seek alternate shelter,” RECC stated.
Both Franklin and the National Weather Service in Jackson, Ky., said that the storms came through in three different lines.
Franklin noted that the first line was the worst – causing the majority of the damage around 1 p.m. Sunday.
A second line followed that with more rain, but limited reports of damage, according to NWS meteorologist Philomon Geertson.
He did say there were some reports of small hail with that system, but those came from places east of Pulaski.
The third line came through about midnight, and while Geertson said there was some strong wind with that line, it was not as damaging as the first.
Franklin said he was worried about the potential of more severe weather from the third line – and possibly a tornado – and so stayed up until 2 a.m. Monday morning monitoring weather reports.
Fortunately, no tornado was produced, at least not within Pulaski.
“Everything that I saw indicated straight line winds,” Franklin said.
Geertson said that as of Monday there were storm surveyors around the state looking at damage and trying to determine whether tornadoes had occurred elsewhere in the state.
He said Monday afternoon that there was one confirmed tornado that touched down southwest of Madisonville, and that surveyors were studying an area near Corbin to determined if damage there was caused by a tornado.
For the most part, however, the damage came from straight-line winds, which can be powerful in their own right. Geertson said that their equipment in southern Somerset recorded a wind gust of 59 miles per hour during the first line of storms.
“There was certainly some damage to some structures nearer to Lake Cumberland that suggests that maybe there were higher wind gusts, but without a storm survey that’s not possible to say for certain,” he said.
In comparison, the Mesonet equipment in northern Pulaski only recorded gusts up to 32 miles per hour, he said.
Both he and Franklin said one reason for the widespread damage was that the ground was already saturated from previous rains, so that most trees were uprooted rather that breaking.
“We have had so much rain that the ground is saturated. It’s too soft to hold the roots,” Franklin said.
Franklin thanked all of the first responders who helped in Sunday’s cleanup and protection efforts, including fire departments, the Somerset-Pulaski County Rescue Squad, the Pulaski County Road Department and Pulaski County 911 Dispatch.
“I’m tickled to death to live in Pulaski County, because when things get bad, they pull together. … I’m proud of these folks and what they did,” Franklin said.
Geertson said that the area’s weather should be a lot calmer in the coming days.
“The next several days, just glancing through the forecasts, I’m not seeing anything until late Saturday,” he said.
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