Area escapes Tuesday storms with minor damage

Emergency management and city officials are counting their blessings after Tuesday's thunderstorm that passed through the area produced only minor damage.

Three bouts of storms hit the area Tuesday evening, causing flash flooding, downed power lines and trees and knocking out power. The National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., reported 3.5 inches of rain and 60 to 65 mile per hour winds in Cape Girardeau.

Bollinger County emergency management director Jim Bollinger expected his office to be flooded with telephone calls of damage reports on Wednesday morning but instead fielded only a handful of calls.

"The storm watchers were out there but no one observed a tornado," Bollinger said. "The lightning did put on quite a show."

Among the hardest hit town was Jackson, which had about 4,000 customers without power at 6 p.m. All electricity had been restored by 9:30 p.m.

Jackson Fire and Rescue responded to nine storm-related calls for assistance such as a transformer fire and alarms sounding, captain Curtis Sparks said.

At the height of the storm more than 5,000 AmerenUE customers in Cape Girardeau County were without power. That number had dwindled to a handful by 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The 1,000 AmerenUE customers without electricity in Stoddard County had power fully restored by early Wednesday afternoon. Only 31 of 257 Scott County customers did not have power around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

By 4 a.m. power was restored to all Black River Electric Cooperative's 1,000 customers who had lost electricity. Citizens Electric Cooperative also reported no outages.

Cape Girardeau police reported several cars submerged in water in roadways but no one had to be rescued.

Ruth Ann Dickerson of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department said they responded mostly to reports of downed trees and power lines and water over the roadways.

Cape Girardeau County Emergency Management Director Dick Knaup reported downed trees north of Cape Girardeau and a blown transformer near Delta. The emergency management office was without power for about an hour.

"We didn't have any injuries or fatalities that I'm aware of, just a lot of wicked lightning and rain," Knaup said. "All in all we were very lucky."

Further south in Scott County a section of County Road 219 in the Belk Hill area was impassable because of erosion from the rainfall but had reopened by mid-Wednesday, said county emergency management director Joel Evans. He added that in the middle of the county a few downed trees and limbs were reported.

Ron Eskew, city administrator for Scott City, said the rainfall flooded Main Street for about an hour Tuesday evening, limiting access during that time. The storm also blew tree limbs in a few yards and knocked out power to west Scott City for five hours. Eskew said residents should leave their limbs in front of their yards for pickup for two weeks.

"The damage was minor and nothing like the ice storms and flooding we've had in the past few years," Eskew said. "We compare everything to the big rainfall we had in 2008 and the ice storms of recent past. This was just a little itch compared to those."

bblackwell@semissourian.com

388-3628