Governor JB Pritzker walked the Steve and Darlene Davis property in rural Texico on Wednesday to get a first hand view of the damage left behind by an EF3 tornado that killed two and injured five others on Father's Day.
The Governor has signed a disaster proclamation for Jefferson and Effingham Counties along with nine others that have experienced damage during an active spring storm season.
“Disaster proclamation for this community, and for Jefferson County, allows us to loosen up resources. To provide with urgent and emergency mode with the first little bit, working with all the local officials. Then there recovery mode, making sure we can get resources, perhaps from the small business administration at the federal level. I doubt we see FEMA because they’ve cut back on what they’ve provided on at the federal level. We do have some state resources as well, including the community development block grant program.”
Pritzker says the program provides up to $250,000 in assistance to homeowners impacted by the storm. He added the Small Business Administration has a loan program available to help home-based small businesses.
Priztker says having personal visits with the tornado victims helps him better understand remaining needs that may become an issue in the future.
“I hope it provides some measure of understanding on the local level that we’re to going to forget the needs that people have, immediately and the long term.”
Emergency officials assured the Governor needs were currently being met, and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency was there the next morning to help assess damage and needs.
The Governor is concerned moving forward as the state is seeing more severe weather.
“Across the countries, it’s not just tornados, its hurricane, other floods, and so on. Their happening on such a frequent level now that its necessary, in my view, for our congress people and senators and I mean across the country to get together and are rethinking and rebuilding what used to be a federal emergency management agency. They would respond to help, but now they are getting out of the business. I do not understand why, especially in this moment we know that storms are coming faster and more furious than ever before.”
Illinois had 172 tornadoes just in the first half of this year, breaking the all time record for an entire year of 142 tornadoes.
Mt. Vernon Assistant Fire Chief Bryan Jennings who helped coordinate the emergency response effort said city and Jefferson Fire Officials and Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputies and Mt. Vernon Police quickly responded to the scene.
“It took a very large situation and put it down into bite sized chunks. For each one was divided up into a division, so what it initially looked like was going to take days for the emergency response was brought down to just three hours. The part that we dealt with is about a 13 mile stretch, it was a long distance, and part of the trouble with this area is the roads don’t go through. So it’s very hard to suck your areas off there. A lot of drive ways that go back into the woods broke up into 5-6 more homes. So you couldn’t do the fast push like you normally could, it was a very deliberate search and rescue operation.”
Emergency officials credited training for the smooth response and said they were able to get state help with just one phone call to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.
