Earlier this month at a Kankakee County Board committee meeting, Sheriff Mike Downey revealed just how close the March 10 tornado came to striking the public safety center and jail.

“It’s estimated it missed the jail by about 100 yards when it was all said and done,” Downey told the members of the Highways, Waterways and Buildings Committee on April 16.

The committee’s March 11 meeting was canceled due to the previous day’s storm.

When the storm hit, there were about 400 inmates in Jerome Combs Detention Center along with correction officers and staff, Chief Deputy Trent Bukowski said.

The vehicles of those employees were demolished by baseball-sized hail.

Kankakee County Maintenance Director Ted Workman said during the April 16 meeting the roof of the sheriff’s office and jail sustained more than a whopping 5,000 holes.

“Six maintenance team members were on the roof, cutting up shower curtains, covering 26 damaged skylights in any fashion possible,” Workman said during the meeting.

“They completed that task and came down off the roof around 11 p.m. We also swept through all living areas in the jails, keeping debris from getting to the inmates and for safety purposes.

“I wanna say thank you to all correctional officers involved for their help in cleaning up plastic shards from the skylights for safety as well.”

Workman was thankful for the work completed.

“These maintenance team members worked long, arduous hours the night of the storm and were staying late to complete the necessary tasks for emergency.

“I’d like to take a special thank you to them working together and accomplishing a daunting job outside the scope of their own normal work days.”

Six of those team members were in attendance at the meeting and were applauded for their work.

Damage to the exterior of the sheriff’s office still can be seen. There are large holes in the facade and at least two windows still need repaired.

Besides the sheriff’s office/jail complex, Workman said the county’s other eight buildings took damage, including the IKAN Regional Superintendent of Education Office on the south side of Kankakee and the Kankakee County Health Department on Kankakee’s west side.

There were 30 to 50 county vehicles hit by hail.

When it comes to a dollar amount for the county’s losses, that won’t be known until mid-summer.

Kankakee County Administrator Anita Speckman explained to the committee members it is a long drawn out process.

Insurance and adjusters have been closely looking at each building to document all the damage.

“I just wanna be real brief about what I share because there really is a lot in the process right now,” Speckman said. “What it’s done is slow down repairs.”

Speckman said county officials were told some advanced payment will come towards the end of May, but it is a small percentage of the loss.

“We don’t know what that amount is. I tried to pin them down a little bit, but I can’t really get even a percentage. They wouldn’t really share that with me.

“Then payments based on approved, the loss reports, loss reports of actual losses will come sometime after July 4th.

“So to say, what’s our loss? We don’t know, it’s going to take some time, but it is considerably more than we thought initially.”