By Jim T. Ryan
Staff Writer
The severe storms that hit much of the northeast U.S. on May 15 exacted a heavy toll in Perry County with downed trees, damaged buildings, auto accidents, and more than 1,000 homes without power.
It's possible the storm contributed indirectly to at least one serious injury in Marysville, where a road worker was hit by a falling power line.
But for the most part, the storms spared the area of the most serious consequences, officials said.
"At this time, there have been no reports of loss of life or injury that was storm related. We still have a handful of township roads closed or partially closed for debris cleanup," Rich Fultz, director of Perry County Emergency Management Agency, said in an email on May 16.
The storms that began moving across the area around 3 p.m. on Tuesday carried high winds, lightning, hail and heavy rain.
And in a number of cases, the storms had a heavy impact.
The Wenger farm at Mill and Pike roads in Spring Twp. suffered some of the most visually striking damage when high winds ripped a large section of roof off the barn.
There were many downed trees throughout the county, as well as power lines.
Early in the day, Fultz said there were about 1,000 homes around the county without power. By the afternoon, PPL had been working on the outages and had whittled that down to 892 customers, according to its outage mapping website.
"Most of the damage was caused by falling trees," said Tracie Witter, regional affairs director with PPL Electric Utilities.
A tree down on power lines along New Valley Road in Rye Twp. on May 16. The storm knocked out power to more than 1,000 people in Perry County.
The worst of the outages was in Rye Twp. where 280 customers were without power.
Elsewhere, 268 customers were out of power in Penn Twp., 219 in Carroll Twp., 73 in Wheatfield Twp., 18 in Spring Twp., and 30 in Liverpool Twp. There were various outages scattered around the rest of the county.
By Thursday afternoon, power had been restored to most of the county and those without power was down to 174 customers, Witter said. The company expected to have power restored by 11 p.m. Thursday, she said.
PPL had about 1,200 people working to restore power to its 102,000 affected customers in the region. The company was assisted by crews from nine states.
Fultz said he was asked by the National Weather Service (NWS) to investigate some of the worst damage in Spring, Carroll, Wheatfield, Penn and Rye townships, where some residents reported possible tornadic activity.
Luckily, it wasn't that serious.
"Nothing out of the ordinary really for a severe storm," Fultz said. "No evidence of tornado activity on the ground."
Most of the damage was from straight-line wind gusts in the storm, not the rotating chaos of a tornado. However, he said it was possible NWS could send a team to double-check a Rye Twp. location.
Daisy Lightner, Rye secretary, said Leewood Village and Cove Hill and New Valley roads all had significant trees and power lines down from the storm.
"We had hail," she said. "It was furious."
Marysville suffered a large number of trees down in Rockville Estates, the new development on the mountain, borough Manager Scott Weaver said. He's also a member of the Marysville Fire Company.
By far the most serious incident involved an electric line coming down in the borough, Weaver said. A line on Park Drive fell, allegedly because of a rotted pole base, and hit a worker from Construction Masters Services. The company is working on the reconstruction of Park Drive.
Weaver said the worker was hospitalized with burns but is alive.
A company official confirmed the incident, but declined to comment.
On Thursday, Weaver said the worker was at home continuing to recover.
Fultz said the incident came into 911 from a resident as a report of a man being struck by lightning. The caller said the man was up and talking on his cell phone. Emergency services were dispatched and the man was transported to a hospital.
There were also reports of wires down in the same area around that time, but Fultz said he was unable to confirm the precise nature of the incident.
Crews have been inspecting poles in Marysville to see if any need to be replaced because of rotting bases, Weaver said. On May 16, crews were inspecting poles in Rye Twp., too.
Witter said she was checking on the incident in Marysville and whether the line belonged to PPL. There were some PPL lines down in the borough, but she could not confirm the incident as described by others.
Jim T. Ryan can be reached via e-mail at jtryan@perrycountytimes.com