Cooperation marks storm response around Monett area

Cities, neighbors help town clean up from storm that spawned multiple small tornadoes last week
Years of Monett’s “good neighbor” policy in providing assistance to area communities facing emergencies paid off last week as fire departments, utility crews, and other emergency responders poured into Monett to help following the April 29 windstorm.
“I would like to express my sincere thanks to our city crews, who acted with a prompt and professional response,” stated Monett Mayor Randy Burke. “I would also like to thank the seven agencies, coming from as far as Shell Knob, who responded to assist us, and recognize the Monett Fire Department for its availability to assist our neighboring communities as well as serve Monett.”
David Compton, Monett’s emergency management director, said city leaders set up a command center to respond to the storm’s damage in less than an hour after the storm hit shortly after 9 a.m. By 10 a.m. the entire emergency management team was in place, meeting again in the afternoon and the evening.
Mutual aid arrived in town by fire departments from Cassville, Butterfield, Exeter, Purdy, Central Crossing, the Aurora city department and the Monett Rural Fire District. The American Red Cross made tarps, shovels, rakes, and water available for those needing them.
Compton reported the Clark Community Mental Health Center, which owns the former St. Vincent’s Hospital building, provided help to people needing to plug in their medical devices.
The quick response, Compton continued, resulted from the city providing emergency response tools. He noted that at the time of the May 4, 2003 tornado in Pierce City, the dispatch center worked out of the former Monett Times building at 212 Fifth St., using a World War II vintage radar system that had significant blind spots from local clutter.
“Today we have real-time communications by people at shelters and with all the emergency response chiefs,” Compton said. “We use Microsoft Teams, and we can instantly say, ‘We need to move people to this location.’”
Even the county dispatch center is no longer totally bound by information from the National Weather Service. Sarah Mareth, the operations manager for Lawrence County Emergency Services, reported responders use Slack.com, a federally funded platform and chat service between emergency managers, spotters, and neighboring agencies to gather information as incidents are ongoing. That offers an earlier assessment of conditions on the ground.
Compton added that the National Weather Service now has radar playback that can be reviewed as well as debris in the field to assess what happened in a storm.
“The amount of coordination and cooperation between all the partners was amazing,” he said.
The lasting impact of the storm was the prolonged power outage, the most significant since the 2007 ice storm.
Skip Schaller, Monett utilities superintendent, said the main obstruction for Monett was that power lines from Liberty were down on Highway H, north of town, cutting off Monett’s source. Highway H was closed north of Farm Road 2220 Tuesday night while Liberty crews restored service to lines knocked to the ground and damaged poles.
“Basically, our goal is to get three-phase service [that powers commercial operations] up and running and then break out to smaller lines,” Schaller said.
Power to Monett now comes from two directions. Liberty’s lines approach the city from the north on Highway H, cut east on Cleveland Avenue to Chapell Drive, connecting to the substation on the EFCO property. Power also comes in from the west on high voltage lines running south between Farm Roads 1040 and 1050, crossing Highway 60 near the MoDOT service depot west of town, then running in along Hwy. 60.
“Our electric guys were working 16-hour days,” Schaller said. “The water guys and public works all pitched in. We had a really good team effort.
“We didn’t have any big insurmountable issues. We ran all the city’s generators. We hadn’t run them for an extended time since the 2007 ice storm. Some of them really used a lot of fuel. We were a little nervous about our well pressure because we couldn’t read the water gauges with our fiber optics system down. The airport had some of its approach lights down that are run through Ozark Electric. We got that fixed on Thursday.”
A particularly big assistance, Schaller noted, came from the City of Carthage’s utility crew. Carthage sent seven people and several rigs, smaller than what Monett uses, that fit into backyards. Their assistance cut at least a day off of restoring service to all Monett’s customers, Schaller said, in an effort that continued into Friday.
Police Chief George Daoud had a number of off-duty officers come in to help on Tuesday morning after the storm. Daoud planned extra patrols for Tuesday evening in the widespread power outage, but was pleased to report no problems.
The Barry-Lawrence Ambulance District stayed busy throughout the day on Tuesday. Paula Flory, office manager, said crews responded to persons needing their oxygen equipment to work and stood by on many other cases while utility crews moved power lines.
Another unexpected response came from food truck operators, who mobilized to offer hot food on Tuesday with all the restaurants closed. Compton noted that many of those were Monett residents, who nonetheless put their own comfort aside to help their neighbors. James Thomas, owner of Prime Cut in Monett, took his food service to Pierce City, which remained largely out of power until Wednesday night, and reported having record sales there.
Because of the storm, Monett revised its schedule for Clean-Up Week, slated to run for two weeks, beginning May 5. Mike Gervais, communications specialist for the city, said the announced runs will take place as planned, but will only take the normal loads of appliances and junk placed at the curb. A third week of collections will take place May 19-23, at which time crews will take brush and other yard debris. No pieces larger than eight feet in length will be accepted.
In addition, Gervais said the city’s old landfill, where brush is taken, at 23701 Farm Road 1100, will be open from 8 a.m. to sundown to take yard debris.