Woodford Co. opens warming centers amid outages

WOODFORD COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - Just under 19,000 people are in the dark across Kentucky after Friday’s wind storm, and that includes around 1,600 people in Woodford County. That area appears to be the hardest hit by the winds with still the highest percentage of power outages from downed power lines.

KU says across their system, 370,000 customers lost power. At one point, more than 500,000 Kentuckians were in the dark.

Crews have come in from other states to help with this massive restoration, and county officials are opening up space for people to turn to.

Hundreds of thousands across Kentucky Utilities’ service area were knocked offline Friday. By Tuesday, 30,000 were still without power.

“You may feel a little frustrated. We understand that,” KU spokesperson Daniel Lowry said. “But we’re still working hard, and we’re gonna try to get everybody restored tonight and some tomorrow, and hopefully, that will be that.”

While the weather has been cooperating with restoration efforts, temperatures dropping have become a concern as families aren’t able to heat their homes.

“We’re concerned about the weather being cool tonight. So we’re at Falling Springs setting up a warming center,” said Woodford County Judge Executive James Kay.

The space has been opened for families to come by and shower and charge phones or medical equipment. Tuesday night, it became an overnight shelter for those still unable to heat their homes.

“We’ve seen a lot of folks’ needs being met whether it’s by neighbors or government agencies, or our food pantry, or our schools. We’re hoping not a lot of folks will need it,” said Kay.

County crews have also been just as busy getting the area cleared of debris. An overtime job for many, thanks to the destruction of Mother Nature.

“Everywhere got hit. When you have that widespread amount of damage, it’s really, really hard to pinpoint one thing. You just gotta fix everything,” said Kay.

Woodford County Schools will be back in session Wednesday. The district had canceled class Monday and Tuesday because of the outages and debris blocking roads.

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