Cleanup and recovery efforts continue in Alliance, Hemingford, and Harrison – all hit hard by high winds and hail from other storms Friday night.
Alliance City Manager Seth Sorenson told KNEB News that contractors will have a lot of work in the coming weeks and months replacing roofs, windows, and siding damaged by the storm.
Sorenson said roof replacements is a high priority with “a lot” of roofing contractors already coming into town, some going door-to-door.
He reports a lot of vehicles, including 20 owned by Alliance, lost windows and windshields while many buildings had windows broken.
Sorenson has been Alliance city manager for less than 3 months and told KNEB how impressed he was with the way the community has pulled together since the storm.
He said he was “very excited and very proud” to see how many people were out in their yards Saturday morning cleaning up – adding that the city is helping by taking storm debris such as brush and tree limbs at the landfill at no cost for 2 weeks.
Meanwhile, utility crews in and around Omaha are still working to restore power to thousands of customers, four days after severe storms ravaged the state and left a record number of people in Omaha without electricity.
Omaha Public Power District had 188,000 customers without electricity at one point Friday night and says it now expects to finally have some 27,000 customers still without power to be up and running by midnight Tuesday.