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Logan County officials describe sustained flood response, urge residents to document damage
Summary
Emergency management and rescue leaders told the fiscal court they logged hundreds of hours on flood response, opened limited shelters and are collecting damage photos to pursue state aid; a resident urged help after repeated home flooding.
Logan County officials reported extensive emergency response work after recent floods and asked residents to document damage to support state or federal relief applications.
Deputy/emergency management staff member Rodney told the fiscal court the county’s teams had staged sandbag distribution and deployed search-and-rescue resources. “We did have 5 water rescues,” Rodney said, and added that rescue crews established shelter space and “we filled and handed out sandbags.” He asked residents to send photos of damaged homes and roads to the county emergency-management email (emmgt@bellsouth.net) so officials could include those sites in state damage assessments.
Rescue-squad leader Terry gave a brief account of operational tempo. “We had 521 total man hours out of the station,” Terry said, and described water rescues and patrols of blocked roads. He said local volunteers and county inmates helped fill sandbags and that some communities needed multi-agency support: “We may be sending a crew from our rescue squad up there to relieve them.”
Judge Baker, presiding over the fiscal court, acknowledged the strain on county teams and thanked volunteers and first responders for round-the-clock work. The court discussed pursuing public-assistance (PA) dollars from the state and federal government; county staff said they are preparing documentation for a PA request and have already submitted preliminary information to state officials.
Public comment highlighted individual harm. Grant Strunk, a Summers Road resident, told the court his home flooded repeatedly this year and that he believes construction decisions left the property vulnerable. “The house should have been raised,” Strunk said. He said the home is currently uninhabitable and asked the court for help locating assistance or legal options.
Court and staff guidance to residents emphasized documentation: Rodney asked residents to send before-and-after photos and addresses so emergency management can include them in an aggregated state submission. Officials warned that federal FEMA individual assistance previously did not meet thresholds for the county in February, and said a new submission will rely on consolidated photo and damage data to meet PA thresholds.
The fiscal court directed staff to continue coordinating with cities and neighboring counties, to track debris and road damage, and to pursue state-level inspections and potential open-dump grants where long-standing illegal disposal sites were documented during the flooding.
