Democracy on the Front Lines
City Administrator’s Blog
Walter Denton
June 10, 2006
It is amazing how a storm of such short duration can cause such significant damage. Monday night’s storm was relatively uneventful for most O’Fallon residents, but there were a few isolated areas that received extensive damage. Before, during, and after the storm there is a lot of activity by City employees behind the scenes, from Police to Fire to EMS to Public Works. They did a magnificent job in responding to the emergency.
The storm cell moved through O’Fallon at approximately 5:15 p.m. and the strongest winds lasted for less than five minutes. The most severe damage was caused by a F0/F1 tornado that travelled along a line running southeast from the the Hwy. 50/Main Street area to the Hilton Garden Inn to Green Mount and Lebanon in Shiloh. Several residences and outbuildings on Main Street received heavy damage.
From there, the damage along the path damaged the roof of the old Cat City bowling alley and blew off a HVAC unit on the roof of the Hilton Garden Inn. The damage appears to be more superficial until you get to the Eagle’s Landing subdivision in Shiloh, where there are a number of homes that were damaged extensively. Electricity was out for many buildings along the Green Mount corridor, including the Cambridge House Senior Living Center. The good news is that we did not experience any significant injuries (no one was transported to the hospital by our EMS). Power was restored around 10 p.m.
While we experienced damage, Shiloh is far worse. The tornado caused severe damage to several homes.
We have also taken some calls about the activation of the storm sirens. At the time of the storm, there were no active watches or warnings issued for our area. The storm literally formed on top of us. We activated the sirens when one of our police officers spotted the funnel cloud.
We also have received calls from residents inquiring what to do with limbs and other storm debris. The City does not pick up storm debris from private property. Click here to read the news release.
As far as damage to City facilities is concerned, Monday morning’s storm was worse. Our primary radio antenna on the State Street Water Tower took a lightning strike that fried all of our wireless communications. In addition, the water monitoring system was damaged and the heavy rain took out three of our T-1 phone lines between City facilities. Our communications systems were not back to normal until this afternoon.
As always, we learned a few lessons responding to the event and we will work to improve our emergency operations in the future. All systems functioned as designed and the response of off-duty personnel in all departments was excellent.
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