Grayson County crews assessing storm damage, picking up the pieces after storms

GRAYSON COUNTY, Ky. – After the storms on Sunday night, one community is picking up the pieces and helping each other in the process.

Grayson County saw quite a bit of storm damage, but in Caneyville, fire chief Brian Pharris says they were one of the luckier communities in the area, as he recounts seeing the storm for himself.

“I stepped outside to kind of look at the sky and everything, and noticed that there was some rotation above us. Well, the sirens went off, and it was just a few minutes later, out towards the Marathon station, which is probably a quarter of a mile from my house… and actually it traveled about a quarter of a mile, got in front of our house, which is… it was about probably 200 yards, and then it went right back up,” he says.

While that rotation has not yet been confirmed as a tornado, it didn’t cause that much damage. Leitchfield, on the other hand, wasn’t as fortunate.

“We’re seeing a lot of damage in the Stone Chapel area, which we’re standing here right now, and then the Everly area, Lewis School Road area. We’re seeing a lot of downed trees, some trees on buildings, some buildings that are knocked down, as far as like outbuildings and barns, things like that. There’s a little bit of home damage as well,” Grayson County Emergency Management Deputy Director Blake Schroerlucke says.

Damage wasn’t the only thing crews saw during surveys, as power outages were also a concern.

“We had probably anywhere from 30 to 40 reports last night of trees down and about 20 to 30 reports of lines down… and then just a miscellaneous of different kinds of calls such as trees on vehicles and such,” Schroerlucke says.

Caneyville even helped out a member of the community after everything was said and done.

“We’ve been out this morning checking the road and checking on people. We actually had a elderly lady this morning to contact me and said she had a pretty good sized limb laying on top of her roof on her trailer. So me and a couple of the firefighters, we went and removed it for her and cleaned her driveway out to where she could get out,” Pharris says.

They’re appreciative of the help they receive in return.

“Our community is absolutely wonderful. I mean everybody helps everybody around here. So if we need help, if we’re not helping somebody and we need help, well the community they reach out to help us. So I mean it’s all one big family. Any help is appreciated. Ain’t gonna be no help turned down,” Pharris says.

You can reach out to graysonemergency@gmail.com or call 270-259-0303 with any information you may have regarding damage.