NEWELL—On Sunday evening, August 16, a severe storm came through Newell, causing havoc at a handful of places around the area. Heavy rain fell so quickly that it caused flooding at the Newell School District buildings, while high winds took out numerous tree branches around town.
Another place that received a lot of damage was right outside of town at the Newell Golf Club. The strong winds ripped the roof off one of their golf cart storage sheds and downed the power lines. The area was closed off and the public was asked not to drive out to the golf course or enter the parking lot until the power lines were fixed. The clubhouse was closed as well. By Monday morning, August 17, the power was restored and the lines were secured.
Even though the power lines were fixed and the power had been restored, the damaged garage still had no electricity and the roof still needed to be repaired.
The garage housed golf carts that belonged to members of the Newell Golf Club. The space is rented for golf cart storage. Many of the carts had to be moved out of the building as there was no roof to protect them any longer. “We’re just trying to get it covered up so we can get back to normal with our carts and these are all member carts in here, so they own the cart and we rent the space…these on the outside obviously had to go because this whole roof went just over the top,” explained Board member Kim Richards. “I think it must have been just the right direction, where the wind got under it (roof). This was the only building that was damaged.”
On August 29, approximately two weeks after the violent storm passed through, volunteers showed up at the Golf Club to finally put some kind of patch on the damaged roof of the garage. “The plan right now is we’re just going to temporarily cover this until we can get better situated to put new tin on. We bought a couple of old billboard or signs—the vinyl ones like you see on the interstate—and we’re just going to replace the boards and then just put that on for now,” shared Richards. “And then our next project will be to replace the electricity—a lot of these carts are electric and they got to be plugged in, so that will be next.”
The current plan is to do a temporary fix until something more permanent can be done. Right now they are waiting for the insurance company. “We haven’t settled with insurance yet. So we’re still waiting on that, and then it probably won’t be that good—like most insurance isn’t anymore,” said Richards.
There is no date set for when all of the permanent fixes will be finished. “Oh it could be years at the rate we go—everything we do is volunteers and that’s kind of how we’ve done this whole golf course out here. Everything we do it’s all just guys getting together and making the improvements,” explained Richards.
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