Local parks lose many trees, shelter, dugout roofs from storm

Downed trees and limbs littered the region Monday in the aftermath of a severe storm Friday as crews worked to clear and haul away the debris.

Among area parks, the hardest hit was Jackson City Park.

“The park is a mess. ... We’ve got to get it ready for the Fourth of July,” Jackson Public Works director Kent Peetz said.

Volunteers are helping with the cleanup, he said.

“It’s a big priority right now, but it (the city’s annual July Fourth celebration) will be there,” Peetz said.

“There still may be a couple of logs laying around, but I think we’ll have the brush cleaned up,” he said.

“One of our shelters went down,” Peetz added. “Shelter 5 was flattened, so we have to clean that mess up.”

Cape Girardeau city parks saw downed trees and limbs, but no damage to pavilions, according to parks and recreation director Julia Jones.

“We had some trees down and damage in some of our parks, but nothing that was catastrophic,” Jones said. “Everything else held up pretty well.”

Powerful winds knocked down a “huge tree” at Dennis Scivally Park. A tree was blown down onto a fence at Old Lorimier Cemetery, Jones said.

“We had some dugout roofs that were blown off at the Shawnee Park sports complex,” she said, adding the roofs were made of thin metal. “We don’t anticipate those will be difficult to replace,” Jones said.

Power was out at Shawnee and Capaha parks from late Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon.

“We did have to cancel some programming,” Jones said, adding the storm forced the closure of the Cape Splash Family Aquatic Center on Friday and again Sunday.

“It just rained so much,” Jones said of Sunday’s closure.

Many area residents suffered tree damage.

Jones advised residents to trim and prune their trees to better withstand storms.

She said the same advice holds true for the parks department, which is “probably behind” in trimming trees in the city parks.

The forecast calls for some dry weather in the coming days.

“Hopefully, we will dry out a little bit,” she said.

Cape Girardeau Public Works crews Monday cleared debris from alleys and picked up downed limbs along city roadways.

Once that work is done, city crews will begin picking up tree limbs residents have stacked by the curb, according to public works director Stan Polivick.

Residents are asked to call the public works department at (573) 339-6351 for curbside pickups.

“We already have about 100 locations on the list,” Polivick said.

The storm also damaged trees in Cape County Memorial Park Cemetery.

Scott City and Chaffee, Missouri, experienced tree damage, too. Chaffee city administrator Lee Horton said “lots of limbs” were down in the small Scott County community. City crews are picking up limbs, he said Monday.

One uprooted tree caused a gas-line break Friday, which has since been repaired, he said.

In Scott City, crews there worked to clean up the tree damage, city clerk Michael Dudek said.

The storm also took down some large limbs in Cape Girardeau County’s parks, but caused no major damage, parks superintendent Bryan Sander said.

“We were pretty fortunate,” he said.

Business Editor Jay Wolz contributed to this story.

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