Disaster agencies assess storm effort

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Van Wert County is finally recovering from what Emergency Management Director Rick McCoy called “the strongest storm ever to hit Van Wert County,” but McCoy said he still has concerns that another storm — or the continuing heat wave — could undo most of the progress made from June 29 until now.

“The system is still very fragile,” McCoy said of the local electric grid patched up by hundreds of utility workers over the past week to restore power to thousands of people in the area. His remarks came following a storm briefing at the EMA office attended by representatives of a number of local disaster and community agencies.

McCoy said the storm was the first derecho — a widespread, long-lived, straight-line storm — to hit Van Wert County since data has been collected. “(The) atmosphere has to be perfect for that to happen,” he noted. Although McCoy said it was possible that some people did see tornadoes during the storm, he added that he did not see signs of any tornadoes following the storm. He also noted that the straight-line winds of the derecho, clocked at 87 mph at Fred Pond’s weather station in the village of Scott — one of the hardest-hit communities in the area — were certainly sufficient to do the damage seen in the area.

The derecho, which did incredible damage across several states and caused power outages that affected more than 3 million people overall, also left plenty of damage and debris locally that now must be dealt with, the EMA director said.

“This thing destroyed some buildings, but (also) thousands of trees just in this county,” McCoy said of the storm. Although roads have been cleared of downed trees and limbs and poles replaced, he noted there is still a considerable amount of debris yet to be removed.

Much of that debris is in the process of being collected by local road crews, and County Engineer Kyle Wendel and Don Taylor, manager of the Ohio Department of Transportation’s Van Wert County garage were on hand to report on efforts by their crews to remove debris left from the storm.

Taylor said he has employees out helping the villages of Convoy and Ohio City with debris removal, but admitted that there was a considerable amount of debris still to be collected. He also pledged to keep crews out until the job was done.

“As long as it takes, we will be there,” Taylor said during the meeting.

Van Wert Solid Waste Management District Coordinator George Brake also noted that his agency is mulching debris from the storm and has plenty of capacity left. Brake said only about 25 percent of the space available for debris is full at this time and urged people to transport debris to SWMD site on North Washington, just north of U.S. 30.

AEP reported on Thursday that 82 percent of its customers that lost power are now restored, with only about 300 county power customers still without power. AEP officials said they hope to have power restored to all customers by midnight Saturday. Paulding-Putnam Electric Cooperative still had 2,885 customers without power, but hoped to get most of those up in the near future, while Dayton Power & Light and Midwest Electric currently have no area customers without power.

Mark Klausing, disaster chair for the Van Wert County Chapter of the American Red Cross, said the shelter established by the Red Cross in the Van Wert Middle School gymnasium would be closed as of 7 p.m. Friday, but would remain set-up in the gym until Monday in case another damaging storm hits the area from now until then.

Klausing said approximately 64 people used the shelter the first day after the storm hit, with more than 130 people fed there by The Salvation Army on Tuesday alone. Local agencies are also still dealing with the affects of the heat wave that has brought dry, hot weather to the area. Temperatures are expected to be 100 or more the next two days, with a cold front bringing temporary relief starting Sunday, the EMA director said, adding that power usage from the heat wave could also cause the fragile power grid to go down again.

During Thursday’s briefing, which also assessed local disaster response, McCoy said communication was a problem, since the storm knocked out every form of communication (radio, television, newspapers, online news sites) normally used to let people know what was happening — including the EMA’s NOAA transmitters on top of its building on Lincoln Highway.

While WKSD-FM radio and The Van Wert independent were back up within 12 hours after the storm hit, following placement of a generator at the radio station, McCoy said a bigger generator would need to be looked at there for future storms.

Meanwhile, the cost of the storm has not been assessed, although the EMA director estimates it will be substantial. McCoy said that information is currently coming in and would be assessed to see if the damage is great enough to receive federal disaster assistance. Currently, there has been no assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but federal assistance from that agency and the Small Business Administration could be forthcoming if damage estimates are high enough.