By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
LANSING — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a state of emergency on Sunday morning, following the multiple tornadoes that hit southwest Michigan Friday night.
The state of emergency was officially declared for Branch, Cass and St. Joseph counties, which the governor said would help assist with response and recovery efforts at the state level.
“Our entire state is wrapping its arms around Three Rivers, Union City, Edwardsburg, and everywhere in between,” Gov. Whitmer said in a statement. “Our hearts are with the families who lost loved ones and the Michiganders who were injured.”
That declaration came over a day after St. Joseph County and other counties affected by the storm declared a local state of emergency late Friday night.
By declaring a state of emergency, the governor authorized the use of all available state resources to assist local response and recovery operations in the affected counties. The Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division (EMHSD) is coordinating the state’s emergency response through the State Emergency Operations Center.
The declaration also allows eligible communities to seek financial assistance under Section 19 of Michigan’s Emergency Management Act, which helps local governments cover emergency response costs and repair public infrastructure damaged by the storms.
Additional state and federal disaster assistance programs may also be pursued as damage assessments continue.
“We have been closely coordinating with local and state partners to assess damage and support communities impacted by the severe weather across southwest Michigan,” Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist said in a statement. “I’m grateful to the first responders, emergency managers, and public works crews working through the night to keep Michiganders safe. Thank you for your dedication and swift action during this challenging weather.”
“Michigan State Police troopers were among the first to respond when tornadoes touched down in these communities,” Col. James F. Grady II, director of the Michigan State Police (MSP) and state director of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, said in a statement. “I am proud of the work our enlisted and civilian members are doing alongside local partners as MSP continues to support response and recovery efforts. Our teams are coordinating through the State Emergency Operations Center and working around the clock to ensure all local needs are met.”
Whitmer toured the damage wrought by the tornado on Sunday, flying in a police helicopter over the affected areas in Three Rivers, Union City, and Edwardsburg. In a Facebook post, Whitmer added that “the entire state is here for you,” and “we can and will get through this together.”
According to an article in the Detroit News, Whitmer has called for a federal investigation into why a tornado watch was not issued before the tornado hit, and questioned whether the lack of a tornado watch was related to funding cutbacks at the National Weather Service by the Trump administration.
However, in the article, Bill Bunting, the deputy director of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said while outlooks were issued earlier in the day by forecasters indicating the potential for severe storms and tornadoes, a watch wasn’t issued because conditions for producing tornadoes were, according to the Detroit News, “highly localized and difficult to detect in advance.”
“This was very, very constrained in space and time — a very small area,” Bunting said to the Detroit News.
