Cass County Emergency Management is working with the state of Michigan and the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week to review damage from storms and a tornado on March 6.
Cass County Emergency Management Coordinator Manny DeLaRosa tells us while initial damage assessments have already been done, more time has made it possible to get a clearer picture of what happened and where.
“We have a lot of trees down, but we also have a lot of homes that are damaged,” DeLaRosa said. “We have a couple that are destroyed, a lot of people with roof damage. So we were going out today and we were able to see a little bit more than what we did during the initial damage assessment. It does take a while for people to clear some of the fallen trees, start getting a better idea of what they have.”
DeLaRosa says the EF-1 tornado that hit the county formed just west of Edwardsburg and continued for a few miles. It killed a 12-year-old boy. He says having the state and federal agencies along for this week’s damage assessments could lead to disaster aid for affected residents.
“We’re going to gather all this data along with the other two counties that were affected and it’s going to be sent up to the governor. The governor is going to review this information and from there they’re going to make a determination on how severe it was. There’s a possibility it will be sent up to the president.”
DeLaRosa is also telling those affected by the storms to come to the Edwardsburg Library this Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m. for a multi-agency resource event.
“We’re going to have several different organizations there, such as the United Way, Disaster Relief at Work, American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Team Rubicon, and many others. So our goal is to get all these different agencies together and have the residents that were impacted by the tornado come down to get the opportunity to see all these agencies at one time, and they can go from table to table and see what they’re qualified for and see who can help them with whatever specific issues they have.”
Anyone with questions can contact Cass County Emergency Management.