Clarkdale suffers damage following last night's storm

Last night’s severe weather heavily impacted Clarke County. The county had a significant amount of downed powerlines as well as trees that were completely uprooted from the ground. Community members and workers alike can be seen out and about cleaning up the aftermath of the storm.

“Well, a storm system came in last night. We started receiving reports of damage reports here in the Clarksdale area, as well as the enterprise area. And come to find out, we had a sighting of a funnel cloud near the count jasper Clarke County line,” stated Sheriff Todd Kemp.

David Sharp from Clarke County Emergency Management says that from his experience last night’s storm seemed to be an EF2 range tornado.

“Yesterday was not a good day for us, we had a lot of storms that came through last night. Little after eight, we had a system that moved out of all jasper county that had straight-line winds, possibly up to 90 miles an hour,” stated Sharp.

Sheriff Todd kemp says that first responders did an excellent job last night and thankfully there was no loss of life reported.

“Responders responded to the scene here. We had major trees down. We had major house damage. We had some vehicles with people trapped inside. We had to rescue those folks,” said Kemp.

Clarkdale community members who have been out since early this morning are seen helping with cutting down and removing trees that fell during the storm.

“I mean, the Clarkdale Community got hit really hard. You can tell Mrs. Bb's house, doesn't have very many trees left in it. The house across the street got a lot of trees down and then back towards the school a lot. And then about a couple of miles north, it hit Tim jones’s road really hard. So, a lot of wind damage, a lot of shingle damage, roof damage, things like that,” stated Kyle Crenshaw.

Officials asked for people to stay in and not go sightseeing to see the damage from the storm to allow workers to properly complete their jobs.