Following December 15th’s five tornadoes in Greene County, officials have released preliminary cost estimates.

Greene County Sheriff and Interim Emergency Management Coordinator Jack Williams tells Raccoon Valley Radio his preliminary low-end estimate of the total amount of damage is around $15 million. Despite that, Williams says he was surprised by the lack of injuries throughout the county.

“The injuries, yes I’m kind of shocked that we didn’t at least have an injury out of it all. But overall I think everybody heeded what the news media was saying, the weather people saying that this was going to be a bad one. So I think it really helped.”

Williams points out a lot of people were involved the night of the storms. As they were listening to where some of the tornadoes were in Guthrie County, Williams says he called all available storm spotters, county fire departments and deputies to their strategic locations to protect residents and then sounded the weather sirens across the county as the tornadoes were approaching the county line.

“Which in the long run worked out really good for us because there was a lot of people in Jefferson that didn’t have basements  that tried to go elsewhere to get to a place to go. Overall, I thought the sheriff’s office, the police department, all of the fire departments worked well together, (and) had most of it cleaned up as best we could to where you could get through safely, other than the power lines, by the next morning.”

Williams adds the recent storms were the worst situation he has ever been in his law enforcement career.