Area residents, counties assess damage from weekend's wind

Mike Lackamp is hoping to hear from his insurance agent today.

He and his family had just returned from church Saturday night only to learn that his daughter's home, a quarter-mile from his on Route D north of Jackson, was missing a big part of its roof. Straight-line winds had peeled off the shingles and wood and tossed it into a neighbor's field. The home's metal carport was ripped from its cement-and-bolt base and tumbled away, landing in a heap near the road. The wind tore down a portion of a fence between Amber Lackamp's home and a nearby barn.

"With the heavy rain and the roof being gone, water damaged the kitchen, laundry and master bath," he said.

Amber Lackamp is staying at her father's house until the repairs are made. Mike Lackamp, a 61-year-old cattle farmer, said he normally spends this part of the year repairing farm equipment. Today he'll be buying lumber.

He said he was instructed by his insurance company not to clear the debris until the damage can be assessed.

Oddly, Mike Lackamp said, the storm left a number of possessions untouched, such as his daughter's car, a riding lawn mower and a roof-mounted satellite dish.

"The dish is in perfect condition. Right behind it is the portion of the roof that was blown away," he said. "I drug pieces of the sheeting back around to the back of our house and nailed 'em back down to keep water from getting back in."

He had help, too, from Charlie Griffith, Cape Girardeau County deputy emergency management director, who happened to be nearby just after the storm.

"That was way above and beyond his call of duty," Lackamp said. "He was just really a big help. He followed us in when we got home from church to let us know the back of the house had sustained damage also. So I changed clothes to check things out and started getting the material gathered back up. He came back and we worked on getting the roof patched until about 11 o'clock Saturday night. It was just a good deed he was doing. He certainly didn't have to do that."

The men worked against continued high winds and the remainder of the rain.

In Stoddard County, Highway 25 reopened to traffic just before 2 p.m. Sunday, according to John Prance, Stoddard County emergency management director.

He closed a mile-and-a-half stretch of that road Saturday after high winds blew down six utility poles between Dexter, Mo., and Bernie, Mo. snapping electric wires and trapping three cars.

AmerenUE crews replaced nine large poles by Sunday afternoon and completely restored power to more than 1,100 people, Prance said.

Prance surveyed Stoddard County on Sunday and said Highway 25 was just one area with damage.

"Some trees down in the western part of the county, south of U.S. 60. They were older trees, fallen on secondary gravel roads in Liberty Township," he said. The tree debris was shredded and removed Sunday, he said.

Jack Lakenan, Perry County Emergency Management director, found no damage after his inspection of the county Sunday, according to Dawn Eskew, a dispatcher with Perry County Sheriff's Department.

Calls to Scott County emergency manager Joel Evans were not returned.

Griffith spent Sunday checking out Cape Girardeau County's damage, which was minimal, and taking digital photos for county records and to send to the National Weather Service. He saw "several sheets of tin wrapped around a tree" in Fruitland and a home in the Hillcrest subdivision near Route K that lost some shingles.

Jim Bollinger, Marble Hill fire chief and Bollinger County emergency director, said the worst his county saw were some trees blown over by Zalma and Patton.

"Straight line winds is what they expected, and that's what we got. I'm sure we had several gusts of over 50 miles an hour," he said, marveling at the notion of a week where the weather "went from 1 degree above zero to when the storm hit us, it was 71 degrees."

Mark Hasheider, the city of Cape Girardeau's emergency manager and assistant fire chief, said no major damage was reported, though a few trees did succumb to the high winds.

"Looking back at weather events for the year, the high winds, snow, and ice -- we'd like the end of year to kind of go out quietly," he said.

That may be exactly what happens, according to meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Paducah, Ky.

Meteorologist Deanna Lindstrom said the weather will be calm for the next several days, which should give the rivers a chance to discharge water from rain and melting snow from northern states. The Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau rose nearly 3 feet between Saturday's storm and Sunday evening, but when the river crests Friday, it's not expected to get any higher than a half-foot below flood stage, she said.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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