JANESVILLE — A recovery task force formed in the aftermath of a tornado that tracked through the Evansville area in February is asking Rock County for COVID-era American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
Several members of the task force attended Thursday night’s Rock County Board meeting in Janesville, saying the funds would help support those impacted.
County Board Supervisors Doug Sutter and Debi Towns worked together to draft a resolution to allocate the funds. That now goes to several committees for consideration before it can come back before the full county board for final consideration.
No actual dollar figure was included in the resolution presented Thursday night.
The National Weather Service classified the tornado that hit Evansville as a high-end EF-2 with winds of up to 135 miles per hour. The National Weather Service also confirmed that an EF-1 tornado hit Albany with winds of up to 110 miles per hour, 12 miles to the southwest of Evansville, in Green County, on the same night.
They were the first-ever reported tornadoes in February in Wisconsin.
Around 40 properties were damaged. The original damage estimate was $2.4 million, however, the task force has challenged that number as not accurate based on what they have heard from insurance companies and area residents.
Task force member Sarah Tachon told the county board Thursday night that the estimate is looking more like $24 million.
She said some homes were leveled and some deemed inhabitable, and those families are still displaced.
She said that some of the homeowners had insurance coverage but did not qualify for national disaster relief funds.
She shared that one farmer she spoke with lost much of his equipment and as a result is being forced into early retirement.
Another speaker shared that recently-restored rooms in her home where her children slept saw the roof torn off. She said she is still working with contractors to fix it and that insurance does not cover everything.
Most Popular
Comments / 0