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10-minute storm causes heavy damage in Mahoning County
Staff report
Video
A severe thunderstorm with strong winds and nickel-sized hail uprooted large trees and brought huge branches crashing down in the Canfield, Boardman and Poland areas Thursday evening.
Broken utility poles and hanging electrical wires also were left in the storm’s path as township road crews, homeowners and Ohio Edison crews ventured out to assess and begin to repair the damage.
Ohio Edison reported many power outages.
As of 7 p.m., Ohio Edison First Energy’s outage map showed the worst power outage at Dobbins and Clingan roads near Poland Seminary High School and the Poland Township Police Department with more than 1,500 customers without power.
The outages listed all said power was expected to be restored by 3 a.m. today. Also in Poland, there were between 101 and 500 customers without power on Fifth Street, near Knollwood Lane.
As of Thursday, the National Weather Service was still reporting the storm was a severe thunderstorm, not a tornado.
“Because the trees were down over a wide area, it was likely strong, straight-line winds,” said a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Cleveland.
Poland Township Police Chief Brian Goodin said about 7:30 p.m. there were no reported injuries, just “all property damage.”
At Poland Swim Club on Clingan Road, 50 fifth-graders having a party were shepherded to safety by lifeguards and the manager, Joe Paris.
Paris said most of the kids were under a pavilion, out of the water on a “30-minute delay” because he’d heard thunder. His own two children were with him at his station between the bathrooms.
“And it just hit,” he said. “And we all dropped to the ground, and they came up from the pavilion and we got into the bathrooms.”
When they came out, they saw that two large pine trees had split, and half of them had fallen into the pool.
“There was hail coming, and it was hurting,” said Paris’ daughter, Gianna, 10, describing her dash for safety.
“It was a tornado,” said Nico Paris, 6, describing his thought when he saw the trees in the pool.
Swim Club President Jim Mullally said the plan was to “grab a hold of everyone who can come down tomorrow and help out and get us up and running as quickly as possible.”
He said Stride’s Tree Service is planning to remove the trees. The owner is a club member. He also said the storm damaged a lot of chairs and umbrellas, but there was very little structural damage to the building.
Along state Route 616 and in Poland Township neighborhoods near the Struthers border, the storm left much devastation. Huge trees were uprooted, and wires were down everywhere.
On Bel-Aire Lane, Alan Bochert stood in front of a neighbor’s house and pointed across the street at a large pine tree — his — that had snapped in half and taken down a utility pole as it fell.
It would be 12 to 24 hours, said the neighbor, Denise Burns, before power and phone lines would be restored to the neighborhood.
Bochert said he was at home watching TV, and his mother and sister were in the Walmart parking lot in Boardman trying to get to their car when the storm hit. “It was hailing,” he said.
“Was that hail?” asked another neighbor, Alethea Michaels. “It’s all you could see. You couldn’t see across the street.”
Across Burns’ backyard, treetops were visible above the fence line — lying down sideways. The neighbor’s fence on her left was partly crushed by a large branch.
Denise’s daughter Michelle hid in the closet.
“Cause we don’t have basements, so where do you go?” said Michaels.
Not far away from them on Delaware Avenue, James Laska had a close call when a branch, itself the size of a small tree, broke off an enormous maple beside his house and crashed through his roof. He was in his upstairs bathroom about to get a shower at the time.
“The house was shaking,” he said. “When I came out, I couldn’t see because of a dust cloud.”
His sister, Bonnie, said she had just recently moved out of the house, but underneath the tree branch in her bedroom is her great-grandmother’s cherrywood bedroom set. She has no idea if it survived.
The storm lasted 10 minutes – five minutes of rain and five minutes of hail, said their neighbor, Brian Kadlubowski.
Also in Poland, there were trees down on Highland Avenue, off state Route 170, and another tree was on U.S. Route 224 near Holy Family Church.
On Meander Woods Court in Canfield, a large tree was knocked down.
There were parts of Canfield with between 101 and 500 customers without power on South Turner Road and at state Route 46 and Herbert Road. Another section of Herbert Road, between Route 46 and South Turner had an outage of between 21 and 100 customers, according to Ohio Edison First Energy’s map.
Shields Road and Lockwood Boulevard in Boardman also had between 101 and 500 customers without power.
Lockwood was closed for a time late Thursday because several trees were knocked down, making the road impassable.
There were also multiple outages at Brookwood Road and Shields. Trees were reported down on Arlene Avenue and Erie Street.
Cardinal Joint Fire District Chief Don Hutchison said he didn’t believe it was a tornado in Canfield.
“It looks like straight-line wind as it stands right now,” he said.
He said the damage was concentrated on state Route 46 on the north side of Canfield City and into Canfield Township, specifically on Shields and Gibson roads, as well as Blueberry Hill and Herbert Road. “We had heavy rains and hail and high winds, and it came through pretty quick,” said Canfield Sgt. Josh Wells. “Calls started coming for trees down in the roadway, trees down in people’s yards ... [we] probably fielded 20-some calls of that nature.”
Wells said the most concentrated area of damage was “the northwest part of the city, which is the same place that was most affected by that low-grade tornado that came through about a year ago.”