Thunderstorms Leave a Considerable Amount of Damage Including Numerous Power Outages…Waynesville Schools Closed

Tornado sirens were blaring late last night (Monday). The KJEL listening areas saw up to three tornado warnings with a bunch of severe thunderstorm warnings late last night (Monday). Director with Missouri Emergency Management Randy Rowe says there was no damage after the first tornado warning, but the other two warnings did unfortunately leave a decent amount of damage.

Rowe says no one was injured, but the damage will take some time to clean up.

Rowe is glad there were no injuries and says there was a decent amount of people who lost power after the thunderstorms.

Officials with Laclede Electric Cooperative say that winds broke poles and caused outages to around 8,100 customers. Crews have reduced the number of outages to 6,856.
In addition to all LEC Linemen and support staff, Consolidated Electric and Asplundh Tree Services are working on the restoration effort.

Officials say there there are 92 separate outages.
1 substation affecting 2,132 members
7 primary distribution lines affecting 2,919 members
29 secondary lines affecting 1,744 members
5 transformers affecting 15 members, and
48 individual accounts.

Crews must investigate the extent of the damage and then repair each one to restore power. The substation and many of the power lines have multiple damaged areas. Across the system, and crews have identified 12 broken poles, many of which have metal, trampolines, and trees wrapped in the lines.