PIKE COUNTY, Ohio — A southern Ohio county was hit hard by severe weather early Thursday morning.
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The storms left a path of destruction across Pike County, and crews are already volunteering to help clean up the mess.
“You always want to help, but you don’t want to hope for a disaster like this,” Josh Ramey said.
Ramey is the pastor at Waverly First Baptist Church in Pike County.
He and several volunteers from his church got right to work helping remove downed trees after the storms.
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“We’re just trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus and do what we can to help out a neighbor,” Ramey said.
Helping after storms isn’t anything new for Ramey and his congregation.
“We go follow up after hurricanes, after tornadoes, and something like that,” Ramey said.
Thursday’s work was different than any other disaster they’ve helped with.
“Today, we got to follow up in our own community. It’s a little different. First time we’ve got to actually do this,” Ramey said.
Ramey said that makes it harder.
“You look at this, and you wonder, I mean, how some of these people put everything back together. It’s probably gonna be years, things like that,” Ramey said.
Steve Hart was one of the families helped by the volunteers.
“If everybody just helps out a little bit, you can get a lot done. It’s in any disaster, any community, as long as the locals can get together and help each other and make sure everybody’s okay. All of this can be cleaned up,” Hart said.
Hart added that he had debris scattered across his property.
Pike County Emergency Management Director Tim Dickerson said a lot of people are in the same situation.
“A lot of our residents are out right now trying to clean up their own property, so we worry about them being injured, secondary injuries, and having to respond to that,” Dickerson said.
Power crews were also cleaning up, as several main lines snapped in the storm.
It’s still too early to tell what exactly caused the damage.
But Dickerson says he has an idea.
“A lot of times you’ll see the trees that are leaning in a certain direction, or you’ll see that they’re the tops are stripped out, and it makes them look like candles. Those are pretty good indicators that there was some tornadic activity,” Dickerson said.
Despite all the damage, the EMA director said no one was hurt.
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