The Hodgenville Police Department was the first agency on the scene Monday morning for a reported structure fire at a residence on the 400 block of Campbellsville Road. Upon arrival shortly after 4:30 a.m., responding officers saw a garage on the property was on fire and alerted the Hodgenville Fire Department.
The fire spread from the garage to an adjacent trailer on the same property. Surrounding homes were also damaged in the blaze. The two structures that caught fire directly were deemed a total loss.
Nobody was located at the property at the time of the fire and no injuries were reported. The HPD says the investigation eventually revealed that Jimmy Puckett, the property’s resident, started the fire, and told officers he “set the fire in order to go to jail.”
The investigation into the incident is ongoing. Puckett was lodged in the LaRue County Detention Center on a Second Degree Arson charge.
The Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office says this November’s election could have the highest voter turnout in decades as January marked the tenth consecutive month of increased voter registration.
The Secretary of State’s Office says 6,700 new voter registrations were made in January, while 6,156 were removed. Of those removed, about 5,000 were for deceased voters, 578 were for voters convicted of felonies, and 325 moved out of state.
The Secretary of State’s Office says Republican registration rose by 2,111 in January, bringing total Republican registration in the state to about 46 percent of the electorate. Democratic registration in January decreased by 2,751, with Democratic registration representing about 44 percent of the electorate. Other party registration went up 1,184 in January.
Area residents are advised to be mindful of outdoor burning as Kentucky’s Spring Wildfire Hazard Season is in effect from now through April 30.
“This area, you drive out in the county, you’ve got a lot of wooded areas around the fields,” said Radcliff Fire Department Deputy Fire Marshal Tomy Crane. “What we have sometimes is the grass in the field will actually catch fire and then that carries it into the wooded area, so that’s something that we have to watch for if the area is real dry.”
Crane says fire incidents can come from unexpected sources.
“I’ve been on fires where it’s been anything from a flicked cigarette to a farmer,” Crane said. “He’s bushhogging his corn stalk stubble, and he has a bearing overheat, and I’ve actually had where the fire actually spreads, it’ll have little spot fires all throughout his field because he didn’t realize it was catching things on fire as he drove around.”
During Wildfire Hazard Season, it is illegal to start any fires within 150 feet of any woodland or brushland between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. unless the ground is completely covered in snow.
Crane says check with local jurisdictions on other open burning regulations, and never leave any fire unattended. Crane also said if you plan on doing any burning, give local fire crews a head’s up.
“It’s always good to call 911, the non-emergency line, and just let them know that you’re planning on doing a controlled burn so that that way they have an idea, so if there is a callout for a possible fire then they can say ‘oh, well, we know there’s a controlled burn in this area,’” Crane said.
Find more information on Kentucky’s outdoor burning laws at eec.ky. gov.
When Hardin County Animal Care and Control Director Mike McNutt was presented with the 2023 Achievement for Animals Award at the Kentucky Animal Welfare Summit in Frankfort Friday, he said the award was just as much a testament to his team at the Hardin County Animal Shelter and the people who call Hardin County home.
“The community’s got to be on board, and there’s a few naysayers out there who, quite frankly, just are uneducated about the problems and are listening to the wrong people, but for the most part this community is the big reason for the success of this shelter, not to mention the support we get from Hardin County Government,” McNutt said.
McNutt has been involved in animal care for more than 35 years, serving in his current position since 2016. Humane Society of the United States Kentucky State Director Todd Blevins said during the summit that McNutt and the shelter’s efforts are evident beyond Hardin County.
“In that time, Mike has made Hardin County one of the premier shelters in the state,” Blevins said. “In the truest sense of the word, they are one of our leaders in this state, and that’s thanks to his leadership, but he hasn’t stopped there. He’s branched out to surrounding counties in his area, and I believe some of those individuals are here today, too, which I think is a testament to Mike’s leadership in the entire region and indeed in the entire state.
McNutt said the shelter has a multi-year streak of achieving No-Kill status going, and the experience of the staff has allowed the shelter to focus on fixing problems animal shelters have faced in the past.
“Now we know where we’ve always been doing it wrong, that making a place that accepts animals 24/7 made the animals disposable, like trash,” McNutt said. “That is not acceptable today. We pick up animals when we do, the timeframe that we do, because it’s all part of a plan to fix the problem, to fix what’s broken.”
McNutt said support for the shelter was evidenced by Elizabethtown City Council Member Julia Springsteen and Hardin County Judge-Executive Keith Taul attending the summit.
The City of Elizabethtown is still collecting community input on the city’s “Vision Zero” Transportation Safety Action Plan.
City Director of Planning and Development Joe Reverman said public input is part of the creation of the action plan laid out by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets for All Program.
“The action plan is a public plan, it’s a plan for the public to use public funds and things like that, so we need to know what the public has to say about the safety plans and what roadways need improvements, and include that information as part of the action plan,” Reverman said.
The city received a $200,000 grant through the program to conduct engineering work related to developing the plan, and the plan will help the city as they try to secure additional funding through the program for road safety improvement projects.
“It’s a process where we’re gathering data, getting input from the public, and the goal is by summer to have this action plan developed so that by the fall of next year we can apply for future grants,” Reverman said.
The impact of recent efforts to improve safety can be seen in the data collected for the plan so far.
“Since 2022, the R-cuts on Dixie Highway and the roundabouts, they’ve already seen a reduction in accidents and likely lives that have been saved from those improvements,” Reverman said.
