On February 16, 2015, a winter storm that dumped between eight inches and a foot of snow across the county, coupled with the frigid temperatures that followed and later the freezing rain, has played havoc with schedules including everything from schools to churches to deliveries to businesses and, of course, the task of clearing city streets, county and state roads.

Meetings and events were postponed and/or canceled, and vehicles were involved in accidents from one end of the county to the other.

School classes in Clinton County were canceled all of last week as well as Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, with a decision as to whether or not classes would resume on Thursday and/or Friday to come on Wednesday afternoon.

Several buildings and structures were reportedly damaged from the weight of the snow, and the worst hit were floating structures at the three marinas in Clinton County on both Lake Cumberland and Dale Hollow Lake.

Several mooring structures, commonly referred to as “boat slip” structures were affected and or damaged at each of the three docks situated in Clinton County, Grider Hill Marina on Lake Cumberland, and Wisdom Dock and Wolf River Marina on Dale Hollow Lake.

Several boat slips were pushed down into the water at Wolf River Marina early last week as of a result of the weight from the snow on the roofs, as was the case at Wisdom Dock and Grider Hill.

As the structures continued to be stressed from the weight of the snow, structures received serious damage in the form of totally collapsed roofs at both Wisdom Dock and Grider Hill, also causing damage to several boats that had been moored underneath the structures.

In several instances, the boats sank as a result of those collapsed roofs.

On Tuesday morning, dock spokespersons said that at press time, there had been no total assessment as to the monetary damage that had been caused at any of the docks, as they were all just beginning the process of working with insurance agencies and adjusters.

Elizabeth Sasser at Grider Hill Marina told the Clinton County News that she would guess that additional damage and losses would continue to be discovered as employees began the process of investigating just how extensive the damage actually was.

She did say, however, that had it not been for the actions of the employees at the marina, she felt certain the damage would have been far worse and more widespread.

“It could have been a lot worse I think, had our employees not worked as hard as they did,” Sasser said. “A lot of them (marina employees) stayed overnight waiting on the snow, and we swept every roof off that we could get too.”

At Wisdom Dock, the worst hit set of boat slips was a unit of mooring slips for large cruiser type boats that had just been completed last fall and would have been ready for rental with the approaching boating season.

Wisdom Dock

Wolf River Dock

Grider Hill Dock

Wisdom Dock