911 service in Clinton temporarily knocked out during Friday night storms due to downed radio tower
CLINTON, Okla. (KFOR) - The City of Clinton is just one community that was rattled by the Friday night storms.
Roofs were blown away, trees were knocked down and a radio tower crumpled under the strong winds, causing some big concerns because it knocked out 911 services.
The Clinton Fire Department said this last weekend was the busiest they’ve seen all year. The biggest problem was when a radio tower crumbled, cutting the emergency calls for a short time during the storm.
“I didn't realize that it was as bad as it was until we had got pictures of the tower here at City Hall had crashed down,” said Sherry Morgan, Clinton resident.
Sherry Morgan said she and her family took shelter and waited for the storm to pass.
When it was over, she said her property was fine, but it was the next day she drove into town and saw the destruction.
“It was bad, like really bad in a couple of places, but I think it could have been a lot worse,” said Morgan.
There was debris and fallen trees on the northwest side of the city on public and residential properties.
Other than the radio tower falling, several buildings in the area got parts of the roof taken off, like a Homeland and an old fire station.
“I think they've recovered rather relatively quickly,” said Robert Johnston, Clinton City Manager.
The Clinton Fire Chief said they responded to more than 50 calls that night and brought on extra staff to meet the demand.
“We lost 911 services for a short amount of time. All of our ability to communicate via our dispatch center was lost... We did get a temporary antenna system put back in place for our dispatch center. 911 was back up online within probably 30 or 45 minutes,” said Brett Russell, Clinton Fire Chief.
Outside of town, the rising Washita River is flooding fields around the city and the situation could get worse for towns downstream especially with more rain on the way.
“It's been raining a lot to the west... We've got water going over the spillway, the Foss Reservoir, which is further north of that,” said Johnston.
The City of Clinton said they got immediately got to work on Saturday morning to clean up debris and fallen trees. They expect cleanup to take a couple of weeks.
Fortunately, no one was injured.