Gnadenhutten area hard hit by late night storms

Two storms packing a strong punch passed through the Tuscarawas Valley early Tuesday, knocking down trees, damaging homes and causing widespread power outages.

The first moved through the area shortly after midnight and the second around 4 or 5 a.m.

One of the worst hit areas was the village of Gnadenhutten, where trees damaged five or six houses. The Tuscarawas County Sheriff's Office was advising people to stay out of the community unless they had business there.

"We sustained pretty heavy damage throughout the village and township last night to trees and power lines," said Steve Wright, chief of the Arrowhead Fire District in Gnadenhutten. "Some homes have trees in or on them and had to be evacuated. Fortunately only one minor injury at this point."

The heaviest damage was in southern Tuscarawas County.

"What we're seeing is if you drawn a straight line from Stone Creek through Gnadenhutten over to the Newport/Stillwater area, you can almost make out a line of really significant wind damage," said Alex McCarthy, director of the Tuscarawas County Emergency Management Agency. "A lot of it is tree damage, trees being blown down, large branches breaking, trees going down on power lines."

The Dennison Fire Department responded to multiple calls of power lines down and trees down, according to Assistant Chief Jim Shamel.

The department also assisted homeowners in the Newport area, where a couple of garages were damaged and the roof was blown off a building. A couple of houses were also damaged by fallen trees in Midvale

The village of Dennison was largely spared by the storm, he noted.

Donna Patterson, who lives in Newport, said the community was hard hit. The storm downed trees at her house on Kilpatrick Drive.

"That storm came in quick and vicious, never saw anything like it before, but I got hit here really hard," she wrote on Facebook. "Electric is going to be a while because it is down all over my property."

She noted, "Huge tree fell across front portion of my house, can’t open front door, busted part of my brand new roof off, a pine tree fell on the center of my roof. Another tree on back side fell across my brand new kitchen addition, can’t see roof there so don’t know what it looks like, tree is all the way across my roof and hanging across side door on other side of house.

"I squeezed out the side door to get outside because it felt like my whole house was coming down. Trees down everywhere on my property, but hey, I didn’t get hurt and still walking."

The storm closed highways throughout the region, but roads in Tuscarawas County are open now.

U.S. Route 36 near state Route 416 in the Gnadenhutten area had significant damage to a guardrail, said Lauren Borell, public information officer for District 11 of the Ohio Department of Transportation. A large exit sign on I-77 northbound near Stone Creek was also damaged. A number of pine trees were blown over along Route 36 just outside Gnadenhutten as well.

Elsewhere, state Route 800 was closed Tuesday morning at two locations in Harrison County — north of Tippecanoe due to downed trees and just south of Main Street in Freeport due to downed trees and power lines.

As of 10 a.m. Tuesday about 120,000 AEP Ohio customers were without power after lightning and wind gusts up to 75 mph crossed the state and took down trees and power lines. At the height of the storm more than 155,000 customers were affected. Crews worked through the night.

Out of the nearly 35,000 customers the company has in Tuscarawas County, crews were working to restore power to 10,400 customers.

Smart Way Communications, a wireless internet service provider in Tuscarawas County, was able to restore service to its customers by mid-day Tuesday.

"We spent the better part of the last two years hardening and upgrading the network to survive events like these," the company said in a statement to The T-R. "The power grid failure has overwhelmed us as we weren't able to get generators out to every site in a timely manner (mainly due to site access issues, e.g: trees down, lines down, unsafe travel conditions)."

Michelle Ramsell, director of the Tuscarawas County Public Library System, said that all locations of the system have power and internet, including the Tuscarawas Branch and the main library. People who are in need of a cooling center, computers, Wi-Fi, or electricity to charge their phones are invited to come to either location.

McCarthy said the Tuscarawas County area likely had wind gusts up to 80 mph.

"It's just a good reminder for the general public to take severe thunderstorm warnings seriously," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Gnadenhutten area hard hit by late night storms