Hats off to Community Leaders

Each city had their own official or officials that shot under par when playing the ice storm events.

One of Kennett's officials was Fire Chief John Mallott who worked as the leader of the Unified Command Center in Kennett during the weeks following the ice storm. Mallott gave 110 percent in leading the officials and volunteers to insure that everything was handled professionally and properly, and that nothing or no one was overlooked during the process. Through the madness, Mallott insured that no one went hungry or froze because they had no other options. Meetings were held every morning at 8 a.m. and afternoon at 4 p.m. to update information to the officials involved in the safety and health of the community. It was said that Mallott even slept at night with a scanner next to him, to make sure that he was not needed during the night for unexpected occurrences. Towards the end of the meetings and restoration process the heavy workload had obviously tired Mallott, but the chief maintained the heavy workload until the project was completed.

In Senath, the entire fire department served as a vital entity for the community. The department served the community with usual duties responding to aid during incidents occurring in town and the surrounding county. The department was on-the-go 24 hours a day and seven days a week during these three weeks. The firefighters became tired and worn, but continued to push forward to aid the community. The department also aided the community by supplying families with two bags of ice per day during the outage. I witnessed the volunteer firefighters out clearing roadways of power poles, power lines, and debris the morning after the ice storm did the most damage.

Another group was the city officials of Cardwell especially City Clerk Mary Vaughn and Mayor John Prince. These two remained on hand throughout the outage with little rest. Vaughn even aided in preparing meals for citizens and volunteers at the shelter located at the Cardwell Community Building.

In Arbyrd, Robert Burgess has done a fantastic job of handling the circumstance in the city since the storm. The city of Arbyrd as a result of Burgess and other city officials have already cleared a lot of the debris from the city properties and individual's properties.

Overall, I believe that all of these individuals deserve to be commended on their efforts and successes during and following the disaster. There are many more people to be thanked and recognized for their efforts following the ice storm and overall, as a county at whole, I believe that things were handled very well and no one was left without.