Valley picks up pieces after windstorm

Boardman police said they received about 100 calls reporting downed wires and trees across roadways.

STAFF REPORT

Cleanup and power restoration gained momentum Thursday after high winds and rain blew out of the Mahoning Valley.

Wind gusts that reached near 70 mph uprooted trees and downed power lines late Wednesday and Thursday morning, leaving 118,000 without electricity at the peak of the storm in the Youngstown-Akron-Western Pennsylvania area, said Paul Harkey, FirstEnergy spokesman.

WFMJ TV-21 was idled for a time by a power outage, which hit around 6 a.m. Thursday, said John Grdic, general manager. The station went off the air when a substation on Mabel Avenue was hit by a toppled tree. Grdic said the station used a generator for power.

The loud, strong winds lasted for several hours.

During a particularly intense period of storm around 8 p.m. Wednesday, Blair Floyd looked out the window of his Northbury Colony apartment off Reeves Road in Warren and saw a car port lift up in the air — and slam back down onto about eight vehicles.

“The whole thing picked up in one piece. The posts were sticking up in the air,” he said.

A neighbor, Jodie Bailey, said the winds she heard just before the car port collapsed “sounded like a train at first.” At the same time, she felt like her town house was being “sucked in,” like something you would see from a tornado. She looked outside in time to see the car port smash down onto the vehicles.

Because of the warm conditions and the novelty of the high winds that kicked up around 6:30 p.m., many children in the neighborhood were still outside playing. Al Smith, who also lives in the neighborhood, said he thinks it’s fortunate that the children playing outside an hour or so earlier were not near the car port when it collapsed.

For the owners of seven vehicles still stuck under the structure Thursday morning, the hassle of not having use of their car would be just one step. Most of vehicles were also dented, broken and in need of repair.

“You know what [ticked] me off? I just paid it off Monday,” said Duane Armstrong of the 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer trapped under the car port.

FirstEnergy Corp. said the hardest hit areas are around Ashtabula, Kinsman, Salem and Warren in Ohio, and around Altoona, Cranberry, Erie and Mercer in Pennsylvania. Its subsidiary, Ohio Edison, said as of 9:30 Thursday evening approximately 8,000 customers remained without power. Of those, 4,000 were from the Youngstown/Mahoning County area. The others were 2,000 in the Salem area, 250 in the Warren area, 750 in the New Castle area and 1,000 in the Mercer County area, Harkey said.

A big tree that uprooted near the Lincoln Park substation around 11 p.m. Wednesday plunged Campbell into darkness until 3 a.m. Thursday.

In downtown Youngstown, on Hazel Street, a light pole toppled Thursday morning and struck two cars near the police station back entrance. High winds also triggered some burglar alarms throughout the storm.

The city’s 911 Center handled roughly 100 storm-related calls from 8 p.m. Wednesday through 4 p.m. Thursday. The calls involved downed wires, toppled trees blocking streets and dead traffic lights.

Power outages closed two Youngstown city schools.

Taft Elementary on East Avondale Avenue and Alpha School of Excellence on Hillman Street had classes canceled Thursday, said Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent for school business affairs. The district’s warehouse/workshop on Martin Luther King Boulevard was also without power, he said.

Mahoning County workers cleared a tree that took down power lines and blocked Indianola Road in Boardman.

Chuck Malagisi spent Thursday morning looking over a large pine tree that fell in the yard of his mother Clara Vanderhoof’s yard on Trenholm Road in Boardman. When the tree fell Wednesday night, Malagisi said the wind sounded like a train. The tree missed the house but landed on power lines.

Boardman police said they received about 100 calls through Wednesday night into Thursday morning for reports of downed wires and trees across roadways.

A fire department call sheet shows downed wires were reported throughout the township. Early Thursday, reports of trees across roads were reported on Indianola, Hitchcock, Brookwood, Walker Mill, Shields and Hopkins roads, Salinas Trail, Larkridge Avenue and Ron Lee Lane.

Portions of some streets, including Glenwood Avenue, remained closed Thursday afternoon for downed wires.

The roof of the main fire station on U.S. Route 224 suffered some storm damage, officials said. Temporary measures were put in place to deal with the problem until a permanent remedy is reached.

Street crews in Poland village and township were out much of the night and early morning handling calls of downed trees, wires and debris in the road.

In Mercer County, Pa., about 14,000 customers were without power at the height of the windstorm, said Tony Zucco of Penn Power. Most of the outages were concentrated in Greenville, Grove City and Mercer. As of late Thursday afternoon, 1,300 customers still had no power.

Zucco said he expected the power would be totally restored by midnight Saturday. He said he has stayed in contact with the 911 Center, and there’d been no requests Thursday from people needing shelter.

In Lawrence County, Pa., 6,370 customers were without power at the height of the outages, said Bart Spagnola of Penn Power there.

Crews were still working late Thursday afternoon on Wilmington Road north of New Castle near Jameson Health Center, he said. More than 1,700 customers were still without power. Spagnola said the company makes it a priority to fix outages near hospitals.

Customers who need electricity to run medical equipment show up in the company’s computer systems, he said, and they are given priority.

Residents on the North Hill in New Castle were without power.