KSHB 41 reporter Lily O’Shea Becker covers Franklin and Douglas counties in Kansas. Share your story idea with Lily.
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Following an EF2 tornado Monday in Ottawa, Kansas, residents are voicing their gratitude for how the city and first responders handled recovery efforts.
"The city workers have been phenomenal. From the sheriff’s to police department, outside police departments, I’ve seen them coming in, I’ve seen Johnson County, Douglas County. I’ve seen everybody here. The city workers — I’ve never seen anybody work that hard."
"Our local government, the mayor, our sheriff, the leadership, the police chief have done such a phenomenal job leading this."
"Even the chief of police, he came by early, just chatting with people, making sure everybody is OK."
Ottawa Police Chief Adam Weingartner said he took cover from the tornado with his family in his home.
"Once I knew I was safe and my family was safe, [I knew] that it would be time to start implementing our response procedures to start helping the community," he said.
He said Franklin County Emergency Management and local volunteer storm spotters helped track the storm as it moved from western Franklin County into town.
Weingartner said within an hour of the tornado hitting, the Kansas State Highway Patrol arrived to help. He said having that state resource available was critical.
“We had to start asking for outside resources to help us with managing traffic control," he said. "The response was phenomenal. We had agencies from every county around us except Miami County because they got hit with their own storm later that night.”
Within Franklin County, Weingartner said preparation efforts are ongoing throughout the year. He said Franklin County Emergency Management and the Local Emergency Planning Committee are integral to planning for natural disasters.
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“Every spring we do severe weather awareness," Weingartner said. "We host storm spotter training at our Ottawa Memorial Auditorium that’s free and open to the public in March. That’s when we start doing our internal reviews about our emergency response plans. All of those things just happened, really less than a month ago, so it was fresh on the mind to do that. That training and preparation is ongoing.”
Weingartner said the first step following the tornado on Monday was setting up a command post, which included city crews, first responders and Franklin County Emergency Management. First responders were assigned to go door-to-door in Ottawa neighborhoods to check on residents.
"That first night was just focused on life safety," Weingartner said. "As soon as we knew we didn’t have any significant injuries, we weren’t missing anybody, there were no additional warnings for additional storms, we really needed to wait until daybreak the next day to get our eyes on how bad this situation really was. Once we did, we knew it would be a multi-day event to start recovering from."
By Thursday, Weingartner said the injury count stood at seven, with all injuries described as minor.
John Boyd lives in the Orchard Heights neighborhood of southeast Ottawa. Weingartner said it was the hardest hit neighborhood.
“The city was right on it," Boyd said on Tuesday. "They were out here, did a fantastic job.”
Since the tornado, city crews have been clearing streets of debris and working to restore power.
As of Thursday, the Orchard Heights neighborhood is the only part of town that remains without power, according to Weingartner. He said when the storm first hit, over 90% of Ottawa was without power.
“In Kansas, we know that severe weather is going to strike somewhere; it’s only a matter of time where it impacts your community," Weingartner said. "That preparation, that planning, that testing of your response systems helps you out so much to be ready, and I feel like that’s what we did. It wasn’t chaotic for our response. It was planned, it was coordinated."
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