Nearly a year after an EF-4 tornado leveled much of Mayfield’s government infrastructure, the police and fire departments have adjusted to new locations.

Fire Station 1, which was near the Graves County Courthouse, relocated to the Graves County Health Department, 416 Central Ave., on the south side of town. The relocation has led to a slower response time for 911 calls. 

“We don’t have a station on the north end of town right now,” said Fire Chief Jeremy Creason. “That slows down our response time, so responding to fire on the northeast side of town or just the north side of town in general, it slows down by a minute or two.”

The relocation has not been a smooth transition. 

“We don’t have anywhere here to put our trucks,” Creason said. “The trucks are out in the weather.”

Creason says when it’s too cold outside, they have to leave ambulances running 24 hours a day or IV fluids and medicine will freeze. When it’s hot outside, they do the same so the medicines don’t get too hot. 

Working out of the health department is something the firefighters are not used to.

“This is a school that was repurposed as a health department and now we’re trying to make it a fire station the best we can,” Creason said. “One of the biggest challenges is just trying to have a normal working environment for the employees. They went through so much during the night of the tornado and the days and weeks after. One of my priorities was to just try to get them some sense of normalcy in their work environment.”

Tornado damage also caused the Mayfield Police Department to have to relocate from downtown to a building on the Dick Castleman Bypass on the edge of town. The police department relocated to the former location of Atmos Energy, a natural gas company, 900 S. Commonwealth Drive. The Mayfield Police Department has been able to make a much smoother transition into their temporary station. 

“We can exist here until we move back into the new building, but that can’t be said for other city officials,” said Police Chief Nathan Kent. 

The majority of the struggle for the police department came on the night of the tornado. 

“The policemen that were working that night went to help the deputy jailers,” Kent said. “The power was out there, and the generator had been damaged, so we had to work pretty quickly to keep that situation calm and then make arrangements for getting all of those prisoners accounted for and transported to other detention facilities.”

The jail was located next to the courthouse, which was destroyed.

Both Creason and Kent said once they took care of the immediate problems, they had to turn their attention to Mayfield Consumer Products, commonly known as the candle factory. The tornado flattened the candle factory. 

City officials were under a lot of pressure the night of the storm, making sure everyone was safe, and because of that, they were late to claim available buildings.

“Immediately after the storm, we were in a response phase,” Creason said. “All the businesses in town, they immediately started looking for alternative locations, so any open warehouse, store, business got taken really quick.”

The current plan for rebuilding is to have all city officials under one roof on the court square. This will include the courthouse and city hall, as well as the fire and police departments. This building will be funded in multiple ways. 

“We have insurance money, we have FEMA that is going to help rebuild and then there are different grants that we are going to try to apply for that are community block grants,” Creason said.

In the meantime, the fire department is working to move out of the health department, to another temporary location that will put them back on the north end of town. 

“We’re in the process right now of building a temporary station,” Creason said. “It’s like a big tent, but they’re built to withstand 200 mile per hour winds, and it will be placed near the (Dick Castleman) Bypass.”

Creason hopes to have the temporary station by Christmas.