Tornado Update | March 30, 2026

It is important to the Hardin County Fair Board that we are good stewards of the public’s resources as we work to maintain the Hardin County Fairgrounds. That sentiment is amplified when it comes to rebuilding after the tornado damage. We are going to do our best to communicate with the public with regard to cleanup and rebuilding efforts on the fairgrounds. We have set up hardincountyfair.org/tornado to find all of the latest information regarding the cleanup and reconstruction of the impacted buildings.

Our dedicated fairgrounds electrician, Dennis Hinton, and his team were able to restore electricity to the Caretaker’s House, Maintenance Shop, and Office. We’re thankful for this team’s commitment to our fairgrounds and keeping the lights on — safely. They will continue to work on repairing downed poles and lines across the fairgrounds.

Our grounds team worked through the weekend to begin stabilizing buildings and removing vehicles, campers, boats, and trailers stored in the buildings over the winter. Storage & building rental customers were also contacted over the weekend.

Our Junior Fair Board adult team worked to salvage what they could from their office. Unfortunately, given the delicate nature of ribbons and the fact that the office was exposed to the harsh elements all night long, most of the contents of that office couldn’t be saved.

Our Technology team was able to restore internet service and phone systems, which means we can begin to do business again. While electricity work continues, we do expect additional outages, and will — at times — be working from home. We appreciate your patience as there will be a larger delay in helping customers, but we’ll do our best to respond as soon as possible.

We expect adjusters from the Public Entities Pool of Ohio (PEP Ohio) to begin their assessments of the damage this week. We expect this to be a multi-day process. PEP Ohio covers the contents of all buildings. We have several questions for them, and we know our vendors do too. We’re working hard to get those questions answered as soon as possible.

We have been engaged with local and state elected leaders regarding this situation. We are thankful for our longstanding strong relationship with our government officials, and look forward to working with them through the recovery effort.

Additionally, we are keenly aware of the forecast, and our doing our best to manage this incident while preparing for an additional round of storms. Due to the fact that we anticipate more blowing debris, we are continuing to keep the fairgrounds closed to the public for the time being.