Washington Leader to Speak at WIU on Tornado Recovery

The one-year anniversary of deadly tornadoes that struck the central Illinois city of Washington is approaching and the city's administrator is set to provide a retrospective at Western Illinois University.

Washington City Administrator Tin Gleason is to speak at the Macomb campus on Thursday. WIU emergency management students have been working on Washington disaster recovery projects this year.

The tornadoes hit on Nov. 17 last year, devastating the city. More than 1,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and three people died.

Jack Rozdilsky is an assistant emergency management professor at WIU. He says city administrators and emergency managers can learn from what happened in Washington. Rozdilsky says at the one-year point "we can begin to consider lessons learned."