Perryville residents are still recovering from damage caused by an EF2 tornado that touched down near the Perry County School District campus at approximately 11:41 p.m. Friday night and followed a line through City Park across U.S. 61 and continued out into the county until it crossed the Mississippi River.
Several homes near the path were damaged and the school district suffered damage to multiple buildings, including a wall collapse on the west side of the high school, which resulted in district schools being closed this entire week.
According to Citizen’s Electric, as of 4 a.m. Saturday morning, 1,289 residents were without power. Crews were out and working on restoring electric service.
There were multiple road closures throughout the county because of debris and downed power lines. Hwy. E is completely closed, and South Main Street/Hwy. B was closed from Edgemont to Spring Lake Drive.
“Although there is a wide debris field stretching from Hwy B to the bottoms, we are fortunate to have no report injuries at this time,” said Perry County Sheriff Jason Klaus, when interviewed Saturday.
Perryville Public Works Director Jeff Layton reported 17 road closures in town due to power lines down and debris in the roadway, saying crews will continue to work to remove debris and reopen roads as quickly as possible.
Perryville Police Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Jeri Cain asked citizens to be cautious as they traveled through areas affected by the tornado. She also cautioned individuals to avoid attempting to sight-see in the affected areas as they were compounding the problem as emergency workers worked on clean-up.
In a Saturday morning interview with Perryville City Administrator Brent Buerck, he said, “We have needs as a community, and we have people that need help, so that's what we're focused on right now. Citizens Electric is doing its part to restore power and get streets back open. Public Works is here. We are receiving limbs if people want to deliver limbs to public works as they load them up. They can do that when the transfer station is open.
The other thing we're doing for the neighborhoods that we've identified with the highest need and the most debris scattered about, is we're bringing in some roll-off carts, which is like a dumpster service — a big dumpster service, commercial grade — just to try to help people have a place to put everything.”
