Sima Merick of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency provides the latest updates on cities in her state impacted by severe flooding along the Ohio River Valley as of April 10.
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00:00Ohio is among the many states impacted over this multi-day severe weather pattern.
00:05We've seen aerial footage of flooding in Cincinnati over the past week, and that's just one city.
00:12Seam America's Executive Director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
00:19Good morning, thank you for having me.
00:21Alright, let's start off with the flooding in the Cincinnati area. Can you update us on some of the latest conditions?
00:26Yeah, the river gauge peaked yesterday, or early yesterday morning. It's starting to fall and fell overnight.
00:37Areas of impact are kind of starting to be more identified by the county emergency management directors, and damage assessments are ongoing in the Cincinnati area.
00:49And how are your teams responding to the flood situations in other parts of the states as well?
00:56Yeah, so the Ohio River, of course, with the weather coming from the west and southwest, there was a lot of rainfall in southwest Ohio.
01:05So the west end of the river that touches Ohio actually had more flooding on it than the central or east part of the state.
01:15So they crested earlier and have been ongoing.
01:19There's some of the repetitive floodplain issues, some of the homes and low-lying areas that have had it.
01:25The biggest impacts were a couple of three counties on the west end of the Ohio River for Ohio.
01:32And those folks are in cleanup mode, getting their cleanup kits and assessing their damage in the other parts of Ohio as well.
01:40I appreciate the update on the flooding, but how about the communities hit by tornadoes over the past week?
01:44Yeah, you know, I feel like if you have damage from tornadoes, you are, damage is damage, right?
01:54But the severity of the damage was not as severe as we've seen in the past.
02:01Those people that were impacted feel like they were, have some pretty big impacts.
02:06But they're cleaning up well.
02:10They've been able to go to shelters or stay with family.
02:14And most of the damage that we've seen was to outbuildings or barns.
02:20And some of the residential structures had cosmetic damage.
02:24There were very few that were destroyed in Ohio.
02:27We were very blessed.
02:29So what has been the most challenging about this multi-stretch of severe weather?
02:33You've had a heck of a start to this season.
02:39Yeah, so what's been the most challenging is the rounds of rain and the severe storms embedded.
02:45So you respond to one thing and the next storm comes in or it's continuing, right?
02:50It's raining.
02:52The rivers are rising.
02:53Then in comes these thunderstorms and severity with spin-up tornadoes.
02:57So it was just this prolonged period of response instead of immediately being able to get into recovery.
03:05So we were doing recovery while still responding as well.
03:09That was probably the most challenging.
03:11Well, of course, you know, living in the moment.
03:13But what's next for your teams kind of statewide later this week and into the weekend?
03:18I'm sorry, say it again.
03:20Yeah, sorry.
03:20I think we had a weird feedback.
03:21We were wanting to know what's coming next here for your teams kind of statewide.
03:25So we'll continue to support our county emergency management and all of our first responders.
03:32As we assess damage, they do clean up.
03:35You know, damages to infrastructure take a little longer to identify or to at least sort out.
03:41So we'll continue to work very close with them and make sure that resources are available
03:46and voluntary agencies are there to help people in their track of recovery.
03:53We will stay side by side with their counties for whatever they need.
03:58Sima Merrick, Executive Director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
04:02Ms. Sima, thank you so much for joining us.
04:04And we wish you well in getting everybody back to some kind of normalcy.
04:10Absolutely.
04:10Absolutely.