Scotts Valley tornado causes thousands of dollars of damages, the city now reviewing its emergency operations

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. (KION-TV) --  The city says that there were more than one hundred thousand dollars in damages. 

Now city officials are preparing to vote on an emergency declaration to access state funds for repairs.

The aftermath of Saturday's tornado is still evident here in Scotts Valley. 

Debris and shattered glass from damaged vehicles remain here in the Safeway parking lot as clean up efforts continue.

Saturday afternoon a powerful EF-1 tornado struck Scotts Valley causing major damage along mount Hermon road. 

The storm knocked out power, downed traffic lights and forced businesses to close during the busy holiday weekend.

"It's Christmas time, so it's extremely busy," Tyler Best, store owner of Cali Style said. "It's probably, you know, ten times busier than a regular Saturday. "I's probably estimated 10 to 30 people that might have come in that afternoon that didn't after we closed."

Despite the financial losses, Tyler Best feels fortunate the damages weren’t worse.

"I'm not prepared for a tornado whatsoever," Best said. "Now, we do have the the glass strength that is good for the heavy winds, but if it just veered up here, then it probably would have taken out, done some damage, so we got lucky."

The city is moving forward with its local emergency and state funding plans, as well as receiving help from private insurance companies.

"We're as a city, we're applying to CAL OES which is the emergency office services for the state," Derek Timm, Vice Mayor of Scotts Valley said. "Then you have damages to the school district buildings as well, school district insurance will be covering those damages and so there's a mix of different support that we're receiving as a community."

The city is also updating its emergency plan to include tornadoes, a rare but now recognized threat for this area. 

"We were in the middle of updating our emergency operations manual when the storm hit. and so it really before that, we didn't think a tornado was something we'd have to plan for as a community," Timm said.

Clean-up efforts have been ongoing and power has been restored to businesses along Mount Hermon Road.

Light signals have been fixed and most debris picked up. But despite some major damage, things have been able to get back to normal here pretty quickly.

"We had 15 lights that were ripped off of our different intersections here," Timm said. "All of those were restored by yesterday during our prime travel hours. so it really has been a quick response by the city."

Residents and businesses continue to asses the damages, city officials are asking people to support local businesses after the damages from the storm.