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Tuesday, 10 June 2008 |
By MIKE BURKHOLDER
Managing Editor
ST. MARYS — A severe thunderstorm that blew through the region Monday uprooted trees, toppled power lines and caused power outages.
“We did have some damage throughout the county,” Auglaize County Emergency Management Agency Director Troy Anderson told The Evening Leader this morning. “We had a few areas in the northern part of the county where we are looking at a possible gustnado.”
A gustnado, Anderson said, is similar to a miniature tornado. The formation is capable of producing winds of between 80 to 100 mph, Anderson said.
“If you can see the grass swirling around in a field, it is something like that — except on a larger scale,” Anderson said. “We had some eyewitnesses that saw something like that and we had some barn roofs that were ripped off in the northwestern portion of Auglaize County. We also had power poles that were snapped off 5 feet in the air.”
The National Weather Service in Wilmington issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Auglaize County. However the same track of storms did produce a tornado warning for Van Wert County.
“From what I could tell, looking at the signature I would understand why there was no (tornado) warning issued,” Anderson said. “I didn’t see any strong rotational velocity. We looked at the radar three to four times and confirmed nothing was overlooked.”
In St. Marys, a tree limb fell onto a house located at 417 W. Madison St. and the city barn at the former landfill collapsed. In addition to downed tree limbs, the city lost power for between 25 to 35 minutes Monday night.
“We have a lot of branches, some big ones, that are down but that is about it,” Safety-Service Director Tom Hitchcock said. “As of right now, the only damage reports we have are the tree on the house and the barn at the landfill.”
Hitchcock blamed the outage on a branch that fell into wires at the Hegemann substation. Hitchcock said the branches kicked off the relay, which caused the trip.
“It caused the north and west circuits to trip,” Hitchcock said of the outage. “It mostly impacted the residential users, the industrial users weren’t without power.”
Hitchcock urged residents to refrain from placing debris in streets. Instead, the city official said residents should place all debris in the tree lawn for pickup.
“We always pick up debris after storms,” Hitchcock said.
Gary Swartz, who lives at 417 W. Madison St., told The Evening Leader his son heard the tree limb hit the roof of the home at approximately 6:13 p.m. The limb came from a tree located at 236 Lynn St. Swartz said he investigated and found a hole in his roof.
“There was a great big hole in the ceiling,” Swartz said. “I came home and it was just like this.”
Swartz said he was able to remove the limb from the roof and place a temporary patch on the hole. The uprooted tree left a shallow crater approximately 10 to 15 feet in width. A natural gas line was entangled in the trees roots, so officials from Dominion East Ohio turned off service to the home as a precaution. Crews were supposed to return today to repair the line.
Midwest Electric spokesperson Matt Berry said as of 8:30 p.m. Monday, 2,000 homes were without power in central Ohio. In an e-mail released to The Evening Leader, Berry said winds toppled eight utility poles, including four on National Road near Lima and four on Harrison Road, between State Routes 219 and 219A. Berry said 14 of Midwest Electric’s 16 substations had been affected by the storm. As of press time, fewer than 100 were without power.
— Staff writer Kay Louth contributed to the story |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 13 June 2008 )
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