Judge Gabbard Discusses County Impacts of Winter Storm Fern

Winter storm Fern had an impact on all of Kentucky.

Jackson County experienced significant snow and ice. We've focused on the roads and have had a very difficult time keeping them passable. The weather pattern created elements of snow, rain, freezing rain, ice and then more snow that made it very difficult to clear roads.

The Emergency Operations Center was open at 911 and staffed with county personnel that concentrated on assisting the community with immediate needs for heat, food and water.

Jackson Energy and line work contractors have felt the worst of this winter storm working in some of the coldest temperatures we have seen in quite some time. Jackson Energy experienced widespread power outages throughout the region due to the severe winter weather conditions. The outages caused significant disruptions to residents and businesses, highlighting the vulnerability of the energy infrastructure to extreme weather events. Immediate restoration efforts were underway, but the extent of the damage and the number of customers affected made the recovery process lengthy and challenging. I appreciate the dedication of the cooperative's employees working to restore electricity as quickly as possible.

PRTC and Jackson County Water Association braved the weather as well, working through any outages that occurred due to the extreme winter weather.

County Trash service was not able to operate this past week for various reasons. The garbage trucks we have are not equipped for slick roads. Also, the scales at the transfer station froze up and were not working. The particular set of scales we have is an analog system and work using load cells. There are 16 load cells on our scales and they cost approximately $950 per cell to replace. When the scales freeze it is easy to damage these cells by trying to clear ice and you have to be extremely careful to not bust a cell in the process. We have priced updated digital scales and it would cost around $250,000 to change them out. We can not afford that kind of an expense at this time. We plan on running the route as best we can in the coming weeks and do expect every house to have extra bags of trash. We will do our best to get everyone caught up as soon as possible.

Have a blessed week and stay safe