In seeking a disaster declaration in the aftermath of Sunday night’s devastating supercell thunderstorm that tore through Great Bend, Barton County officials Tuesday morning praised the community and the cooperation of those involved in the extensive cleanup effort.

“We did have a disaster declaration, signed and approved by the commission chairman (Shawn Hutchinson, District 3) Sunday,” Emergency Risk Manager Amy Miller said, addressing the County Commission during its Tuesday meeting. “So we’ll be submitting that to the State of Kansas. Kansas Division of Emergency Management'”

There was some urgency with this, she said.

“You want to get a disaster declaration in place just in case things are worse than you immediately perceive,” Miller said. It paves the way for potential state and federal emergency funding, allows the power companies to work longer hours and offers liability insurance for the county.

The initial proclamation was verbal, but it has since been signed by Hutchinson. The KDEM allows a grace period for submitting a signed copy as long as the verbal one is in place.

The damage

As for the damage, “most of it is appears to be limited to the City Of Great Bend and mainly within the city limits,” she said. “Although, there is damage outside in the county.”

The National Weather Service was in town for a storm survey Monday, she said. “They determined that it was straight-line winds. In some areas they estimate it was up to 85 miles an hour.”

This was accompanied by large hail which ranged in ranged in size from pea-size when it first started all the way up to baseball-sized, she said. Some people even said they had grapefruit size hail stones.

“There was a lot of damage, needless to say,” she said. This impacted homes, other buildings and vehicles.

“I have no idea how long it’s going to take to repair some of these things because we’re already in such a short supply chain issue,” Miller said. “The insurance companies, I don’t believe, have a lot of adjustors currently on the ground in town.”

However, she stressed, “I’d like to remind everyone to please file with your insurance.” Her office will put out some information from the Kansas Insurance Department to help if there are any issues getting the paperwork filed, which might arise due to the massive volume of claims.

“A lot of this has slowed down by the fact that so much of the city was without power (Monday) and so even if the insurance agents were in their offices, they were probably working by candlelight and pencil,” she said.

For the county’s part, it had five of its vehicles damaged, she said. They are in the process of assessing building damage.

She said the Barton County Sheriff’s Office keeps finding damages throughout the county. 

“I bet everybody has a story, but we went by my wife’s aunt and uncle’s house to check on them,” Hutchinson said. “We actually found a hailstone the size of a baseball buried six inches down into the ground. So we actually dug it out, it was that big. That that powerful and that deep. So this was a massive storm.”

“It was massive,” Miller said.  The Weather Service said it appeared there were two different pushes of that storm that went through, the first, milder one on the east side of town, and the second stronger one on the west side.

Working together

Miller also praised the partnership that arose with Great Bend.

“The City of Great Bend with its new city administrator (Brandon Anderson) jumped in feet first and appeared to get things rolling,” Miller said. They quickly opened the city’s Event Center for an American Red Cross cooling center for those who needed to go take a break from the heat.

“But I will tell you, I’m very proud to be a part of this community when you see how everybody pulled together,” Hutchinson said. The city looked like an “apocalyptic scene “ Sunday night, but “it was amazing how fast there were trucks, trailer, dump trucks and chainsaws running. The storm hadn’t passed over for 30 minutes, and cleanup was started.”

County Administrator Matt Patzner said the Road and Bridge Department had crews, trucks and equipment out assisting Great Bend city personnel. 

Dena Popp, 911 director, described Sunday as “definitely mass chaos.”

But, she said the county crews were at her office to clear away two truck loads of debris. She also thanked Wheatland for its efforts to get the names of households without power and communicating with 911 when problems were resolved.

“These are procedures that we’ve not done in the past, but I think they worked very well. They were very helpful to us,” she said.

“It was the same way with the City of Great Bend Street Department,” she said. “When we had trees blocking a roadway, they were amazing to work with.”

The Health Department

Barton County Health Director Karen Winkelman said the Health Department secured from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment doses of tetanus vaccine (Tdap – tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis). They provided them free to the community Tuesday via drive-through clinic in the department parking lot.

The staff was also out in the community delivering vaccines and cold water. If called, they would take the vaccines to someone’s cleanup worksite.

Winkelman said the shots would be available as long as supplies last. Those interested should call her office at   620-783-1902. 

Lights out

As of Monday night, Wheatland Electric still had 1,500 customers without electricity, Miller said. There were sections of Great Bend where in addition to the major lines feeding the areas, there were poles down in every block.

“I want to give a shout out to the power companies for getting things on as quickly as they did,” said District 5 Commissioner Donna Zimmerman.

Miller said the power company brought in a lot of crews to tackle the outages.

Only a few injuries

As the cleanup commenced, the chainsaws started buzzing, Miller said. “Being a safety person, when I walked outside and heard all chainsaws, I started to worry”  about an uptick in people getting hurt. 

But, there were some cuts caused by glass, but things could have been much worse. One of these injuries was considered serious, a deep gash to a person’s forehead caused by flying glass, Popp said.

“It was a pretty serious injury so prayers for that victim,” she said.