After weeks of too little rain, this might have been a welcome sound….
(thunder)
If it hadn't come accompanied by this…
(wind)
Friday's powerful storms brought to Ohio a small amount of rain, but blasted through with straight line winds of up to 80 miles an hour - which are classified as a derecho, what some call a "land hurricane". The storms snapped and uprooted trees and tore down power lines, leaving more than 3 million people in the eastern US without power, including more than a million in Ohio. Heavy branches toppled headstones in a Mansfield cemetery and elsewhere sent trees and power poles tumbling into each other like dominoes. The storms yanked down electric poles on a Columbus area street, trapping people in 15 cars for hours. The winds blew down a barn onto an elderly couple in Zanesville, killing a 70 year old woman. The day after, the cleanup was underway….
(chainsaw)
Chainsaws and chippers were roaring while temperatures were rising. Glenn Gee runs a landscape company in central Ohio, and was called in to pick up and chop up storm debris in one area.
"It's about a quarter mile long - it's just a lot of broken-off trees at the tops. It took a lot of wind shear to knock these out."
Watching Gee's landscapers was Mindy Frank of New Albany. She was taking in stride the news that it could be a week before the electricity is restored.
"I think we're going to be throwing a lot of things away that are in our refrigerators and freezers. And I keep flipping the lights on at home, even though I know there's no power."
Two thirds of Ohio's homes and businesses had no power after the storms, and Governor John Kasich declared a state of emergency. Tamara McBride is with the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, which opened up a Joint Information Center to coordinate cleanup and outage restoration efforts around Ohio.
"It's kind of widespread. That was kind of interesting about this particular power outage and disaster. So it's widespread, the power restoration continues to be sporadic throughout the state. By density and population, Franklin County seems to have the most number of customers that are currently without power."
All weekend, people throughout the state drove miles to locate gas stations. Those without power struggled to find operating restaurants and grocery stores with ice and fresh food, and cool places to escape the oppressive heat. McBride says not only were utility crews having to put back power lines and repair and replace transformers that were damaged as well, but then had deal with a second round of storms last night that set back their progress.
"In addition, that storm swept through all of our sister states. And so, where we would quickly be able to go and ask Indiana or West Virginia to bring over some crews and help restore our power, we had to call as far south as Georgia and Mississippi to get crews to come up."
While utility workers logged overtime, about 200 Ohio National Guard members were called in to state active duty, to check on people in Franklin and Montgomery counties. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign asked its volunteers to donate water and non-perishables, and plans to distribute the supplies at seven Red Cross centers in central and southern Ohio. President Obama signed Ohio's request for emergency federal dollars soon after he received it, but the state says it's only for resources such as fuel and water and to assist with water or sewage treatment plants or emergency telecommunications, and doesn't include generators for homes or businesses or money for damage to public buildings.
