Chesapeake Beach cleaning up after tornado

Injured man is out of coma

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The town provided crews with chippers and staged Dumpsters around the town and crews worked in the evenings and all weekend to get things back to normal, he said.

‘‘We’ve had a lot people from the community help,” he said.

Four contractors from Pesscoa Construction, a state highway contractor, were injured when they were working on concrete near Trader’s Seafood Steak and Ale Restaurant as the tornado came through, said Mike Phillip, construction project engineer for Maryland State Highway Administration.

‘‘One worker was picked up and blown across [Route] 261,” he said. That worker was flown to Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore with severe head injuries and two broken legs, Phillip said. He came out of a coma late Friday, but Phillip said he heard that he was ‘‘in severe pain.”

The superintendent that was on the jobsite when it hit was in a full size pickup truck that got blown around on the ground, he said. The three other workers’ injuries included a bruised kidney, shoulder and back injuries and facial cuts, he added.

The insurance company for Trader’s began assessing the damage to the restaurant on Tuesday morning, and the restaurant has not been able to move out any of the debris while waiting for the insurance company to assess the damage, a restaurant manager said. Owner Gary Luckett has been ‘‘really, really busy,” she said.

‘‘I have no idea when we might reopen.”

Luckett’s daughter, who graduated high school the night of the tornado, was able to follow through with her plans to attend senior week in Ocean City.

The Southern Maryland Chapter of the American Red Cross got a call early on that afternoon to assist an elderly couple in Chesapeake Beach, said Greg Jones, director of disaster services for the Red Cross.

‘‘We sent two crews over there, one in an emergency response vehicle,” he said, and they ended up assisting six families with 11 adults and 11 children total, Jones said. The Red Cross assisted residents from one single-family home with a tree through the roof, and residents from a four-plex townhouse that was deemed unsafe after strong winds moved it off its foundation, Jones said.

At first the Red Cross wanted to have a shelter designated, but the Calvert County Emergency Management did not agree to it, Jones said. Instead, the Red Cross put the families up in hotels for three days and gave them funds for food and clothing, he said. Volunteers assisted the families until about 1 a.m. when they were all checked into hotels, he said.

‘‘We weren’t going to leave them outside,” Jones said.

St. Mary’s County opened a shelter in Great Mills after a tornado warning broadcast the evening of the storm, and the shelter had 100 people until it closed at about 1:30 a.m. after the watch was over, Jones said. It was a safe haven during the warning, he said.

Jones said that the idea of getting local churches to volunteer to be emergency shelters was spurred after he had difficulty the night of the storm getting the county to designate an emergency shelter. Having local churches as volunteer emergency shelters would get people out of harm’s way faster, he said. Jones said he is going to solicit churches around Southern Maryland to become ‘‘emergency shelters,” and would like to train church members to assist in emergencies.

‘‘It’s a unique concept.”

The Calvert County Board of County Commissioners sent out a press release shortly before midnight on June 4, in which Wilson Parran, commissioners president, said the board is committed to identifying the necessary resources to help affected Calvert County citizens recover from the storm.

‘‘Our county departments will be working throughout the week with state and local agencies to address the concerns and issues our citizens are facing as a result of this violent and unusual weather system,” Parran said in the release.

The county press release provided phone numbers to direct callers to appropriate departments. Residents may call the Department of Public Works at 410-535-2216 for information regarding storm clean up or assessments. For information about safety or emergency issues, residents may call the Department of Public Safety at 410-535-0396 or 410-535-0314. And for information about business damage or for assistance, call the Department of Economic Development at 410-535-4583.