Published Friday, August 23, 2002
Herald Staff Writer
Tom Sankey knew the storm was strong.
But he had no idea how strong until he went outside.
Sankey, of 3839 Saranac Drive, South Pymatuning Township, heard the rain and could "feel a lot of wind against the building."
"There was a lot of hail with it," he added.
"I heard somebody scream and I came outside."
The pillars that held up the front edge of the roof of his apartment building had tumbled to the ground, and the roof on the front side of the building was gone.
"Due to the cracking, I knew something went on," he said.
To Ed Bortner's amazement, the roof had flown over a line of evergreen trees -- which are about the same height as the two-story apartment buildings -- across a small field and fallen against a porch fence at the edge of his house.
"You'd think it would have knocked down some trees," said Bortner, who owns the apartment building Sankey lives in. "But it must have been so damn high."
Bortner was watching television when the storm hit just after 5 p.m. Thursday.
"I heard this awful noise," he said, "then I heard a whistle noise. I heard a bang against my house."
Bortner heard the sound of water running and saw it coming in his closed window.
"It was so white," he said of when he looked out the window.
But, two minutes later, it was done.
Mercer County 911 received calls of trees and lines down in Hermitage, Sharpsville, Findley Township, Grove City and Pine Township, but South Pymatuning seemed to get the worst of the storm.
Randy Coleman, area manager for Penn Power, said the heaviest concentration of electric outages was in the area of South Pymatuning, Hermitage and Sharpsville.
No storm-related emergency medical calls were dispatched, 911 said. South Pymatuning Police Chief John Kelly said he knows of no injuries in his township caused by the storm.
Kelly estimated 100 trees were knocked down.
"Huge uprooted trees," he said. "We had an amazing amount of wind."
"It came out of the west and just cut right through the township," he said.
Kelly said the Bortner Apartments building appears to have sustained the most damage, but he saw other structural damage caused by trees falling on houses.
David Goda was in a back bedroom when he heard a crack.
"I looked out the window, saw it coming down and dove for the hallway," he said of a maple tree in the back yard of his mother's house at 2889 Saranac. "I could picture it coming through the wall."
But, the maple splintered. While large branches fell on the house, nothing crashed through.
"The windows are fine, the walls are fine," said Goda's mother, Anne, who was not at home when the storm hit.
"My maple tree is pretty well gone," she said, noting one skinny branch still attached and pointing skyward.
An evergreen in the front yard was uprooted and fell onto her driveway.
About two houses up Saranac, an evergreen tree fell against a power pole, and both were dangling over the road.
Up and down Saranac and Shadow Drive, trees were uprooted, branches were detached, mail boxes were toppled, electric lines hung precariously and awnings were ripped away.
Portions of Saranac were closed by South Pymatuning police and firefighters.
By 11:30 p.m., all roads were open except for lower Saranac, which was opened about 90 minutes later, Kelly said.
The response to the storm was well-organized and swift with residents removing debris, firefighters from Patagonia and Sharpsville aiding the township volunteers and Penn Power employees working as fast as they could, Kelly said.
"I was really pleased with the way everyone pitched in," he said. "Everybody did an outstanding job."
Coleman said 6,800 customers were without power at the peak of the storm, and about 400 had not been restored at 9 a.m. today.
"We're expecting to have just about everything cleaned up by 5 p.m. today, maybe 6 p.m. at the latest," he said.
Outside of the South Pymatuning and Grove City areas, most outages in the rest of Mercer County were caused by lightning strikes, Coleman said.
Martha Simons of 2876 Saranac thanked her lucky stars.
"Luckily, I didn't park my car where I was going to," she said, pointing to a maple that crashed into her driveway, possibly the result of a lightning strike.
An apple tree in the back yard met a similar fate.
"Took two storms to get it down," Ms. Simons said. "One storm (about one and a half years ago) took one side and this one took the other."
Bortner said it appeared that none of the interiors of the four apartments in the roofless building were damaged, or even wet, and he was arranging to have a tarp placed over it.
"If we get it tarped soon, we might be all right," he said.
All the tenants made arrangements to stay elsewhere.
"Just from looking here and seeing other storms, we're lucky," Sankey said. "I think this was mild compared to what it could have been."
You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at jpinchot@sharonherald.com