|
Monday storm downs trees, power lines, causes outages
By Rose Hooper
Falling trees from Monday night’s (July 5) storm caused power outages, blocked roads, damaged houses and broke a car windshield, according to Emergency Services Coordinator Mike Ensley.
“A tree fell on a car that was traveling down N.C. 107 and broke out the windshield,” Ensley said. “We had reports of trees falling and damaging three homes – one in Fairview, one in Dillsboro and another in Sheep Laurel community.”
The storm that started at 7:30 p.m. uprooted trees that blocked roads in the Glenville-Cashiers, Balsam, Savannah and Sylva areas, Ensley said.
Trees also fell across power lines, causing power outages to about 930 homes in Jackson County, said Duke Power/Nantahala Area district manager Fred Alexander.
While Duke crews worked throughout the night, 172 customers, including some in Dillsboro, were still without power Tuesday (July 6).
Alexander said restoring service would “take well into Wednesday in more remote or heavily damaged locations, such as Cherokee and Swain counties.
“The special challenge of this July 5 storm is that every county was hit. In fact, there were about 200 separate outages in widely scattered locations. The last time such a damaging summer storm came through was July 4, 1997, Alexander said.
“We are lucky we didn’t get really high winds or flash flooding accompanying this storm,” said Ensley.
|
