Several buildings sustained damage after tornadoes touched down in Francesville Wednesday morning. Francesville Fire Chief, Tim Wuethrich, talked about the event.
“It appears that we had a tornado touch down in two spots in Francesville, maybe three,” said Wuethrich. “It took three poles out on the highway, leveled a building that we call Station Two, our other fire station. We had a fire truck in there that’s underneath the rubble. It took part of a roof off a house on the other end of town. I’ve been at Incident Command the whole time so I haven’t assessed the damage yet.” Homeowners with damaged roofs may need to hire local roofers to fix and restore their roofing systems. They may also need to find a supplier of timber roof trusses for their roof replacement project.
Wuethrich was asked if an emergency team was assembled or if tornado sirens were activated.
“We got paged from the county that there was a tornado sighted in Rensselaer as soon as everybody got to the station the tornado hit. I mean, it was instant. Nobody got hurt, there were no injuries and nobody is without a home that I know of. There was nothing really major other than this building was the biggest part of the damage.”
Oregon Davis students were sent home Wednesday when power went out at the school. High School Principal, Greg Briles, said even though power was restored, it was decided to send the students home.
“We just didn’t want to put our kids in a bad situation of being in a building where it was stuffy and hot. You know how it is when that happens. You get hot and stuffy and you get agitated and the next thing you know, you have issues,” said Briles.
Briles said they were as prepared as could be for the power outage.
“Every one of our teachers has a flashlight to make sure that if students need to get to their lockers they can get to their lockers. We have emergency lighting in all the rooms as well as our gymnasium and cafeteria.”
The principal said they prepare for just such a situation as power outages, fires or tornadoes with drills.
“We have tornado drills every semester and then we also have our fire drills every month. We just had a fire drill yesterday (Tuesday).”
