Hurricane Helene leaves her mark in Lawrence County and surrounding areas

By Roberta Cantrell

BSN Editor

Hurricane Helene raged through several states leaving devastation that is still ongoing.

However, she left her mark in Lawrence County as well with high winds, falling trees blocking roads, heavy downpours and downed utility poles and wires causing power outages last Friday.

The Lawrence County 911 system lost phone service after a major AT&T outage and according to Jill Jackson from LC 911 they lost service at 12:03 p.m., all calls had to be re-routed to neighboring Martin County.

Jackson said they handled 54 calls for Lawrence during the storm. “Three Rivers Medical Center was on diversion at 1:06 p.m., tornado warnings at 3:21 p.m. and at 5:58 p.m., 1476 power outages reported,” stated Jackson.

Jackson also confirmed there were 22 roads blocked and numerous road hazards.

Lawrence County Emergency Management Director Travis Hughes said as of Tuesday, Oct. 1, 115 people were still without power due to the widespread of power outages in so many different areas making it harder to get to everybody as quick.

“Judge Phillip Carter made calls Saturday to get more contractors out to assist Kentucky Power in getting power restored,” said Hughes. “We really got lucky because our biggest issue was downed trees and power lines other than one house was reported to have been hit by a tree but had minimal damage.”

Electric companies from as far away as Kansas came to assist in getting power restored for Lawrence Countians.