Crawford County and City of Pittsburg officials hosted a news conference Tuesday to address concerns following a serious storm and apparent tornado that hit the area Monday, resulting in downed trees and power lines and damage to structures.
Local officials and the National Weather Service were still not able to confirm that the storm technically qualified as a tornado as of Tuesday morning. The storm came out of Cherokee County and across Crawford County before moving into Missouri, Crawford County Emergency Manager Jason VanBecelaere said, causing considerable damage near Pittsburg, particularly to roofs and outbuildings in the area of Langdon Lane south of the city, though no serious damage to residences, injuries, or fatalities were known to have occurred as of Tuesday morning.
“At this point we’ve got storms coming in today so we’ve kind of halted operations as far as debris removal,” VanBecelaere said. “We did all our search and rescue last night. We searched all the houses, made sure everybody was OK before the second round of storms comes through.“
Crawford County Sheriff Danny Smith said there were other storm-related concerns besides tornado damage.
“Right now the one thing that we’re concerned about is the flooding,” Smith said. “We’ve kind of got over the hump with the tornado — we’re still waiting for the confirmation but we’re pretty sure that’s what we’re looking at.“
Waters are rising and preventing many area roads from being usable, Smith said, and authorities in Missouri have had to make some water rescues.
(Read more: Community – Morning Sun)