Local News

Residents recover after suspected tornadoes

ST. MARYS – One day after a storm system that dropped possibly two tornadoes into Pleasants County Tuesday afternoon, residents of Blue Devil country were doing what they always do – giving each other a helping hand.

Tuesday’s storm left a trail of damage, from the border of Belmont to the Hi-Carpenter Bridge in St. Marys, knocking down signage. Then a trail of broken trees and snapped power lines went east of town out Green’s Run Road and Route 16, demolishing cell and radio towers.

Social media posts from local residents show what appear to be funnel clouds in the area. The National Weather Service in Charleston issued a severe thunderstorm warning Tuesday afternoon for an area stretching from Boaz to the west to Pennsboro to the east. NWS said Wednesday that survey teams were on the ground in Pleasants County and would know more about whether a tornado or more than one tornado landed in the area once its survey was complete.

Wind damage out Greens Run Road collapsed the garage and ripped the roof off the home of former Republican state senator Donna Boley, the longest serving senator in state history until her retirement in January. Boley has lived in the home for more than 60 years with her late husband Jack. Her son and daughter were collecting Boley’s belongings Wednesday.

Speaking by phone Wednesday afternoon, Boley said she was fine, but her caretaker had minor injuries. She and her caregiver were in the living room when high winds sent debris chattering a window, followed by the roof coming off her home.

“It was bad,” Boley said. “What really made it so bad was the fact that the roof came off and the rain was real heavy and the plaster gave way. Then, of course, that garage that Jack built on to, it just flattened my car in the garage ... I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Boley and her caregiver moved from the living room to the kitchen, then stayed in the bathroom until her family could reach them Tuesday.

Down the road from Boley, the storm took out the transmitter tower at WRRR-FM, the home of 93-R. Employees were working to erect a makeshift emergency transmitter. The tower for 93-R collapsed down the hillside. Had it collapsed the other direction, it might have hit the home of Pete and Delina Liller next door.

“About 20 minutes before it hit, I went out through the carport, sat down, and I prayed, ‘Lord, protect us from this thing, protect everyone,'” Pete said. “We just saw all the warnings and everything and we just watched and as wind started picking up, I told (Delina) ‘it’s time to get under the steps.’ We didn’t actually see (the tornado), but we could hear the crashing of the tower. It could have come right down on our house. If it has come this way, man, we’d have had it.”

At a trailer park at Riverview Estates near Wrights Riverside Marine, high winds flipped two mobile homes upside down, destroyed car ports and sent them flying into other trailers, and snapped the tops of trees and the bottoms of power lines. Crews from the City of Belmont and neighbors were helping residents cut up trees and remove debris.

Sue Holdren’s family has owned Wrights Riverside Marine and the trailer park for many years, bearing witness to flooding from French Creek and the Ohio River, as well past windstorms. But she said Wednesday she has never seen damage as bad as Tuesday’s storms.

“it’s just the worst I’ve seen,” Holdren said. “It’s very devastating for the people here in the campgrounds. To my knowledge, no one has been hurt.”

Tom Meeks has had a camper at Riverside Estates for decades, but Tuesday’s storms completely flipped his camper upside down. He was inspecting the damage Wednesday morning.

“It’s kind of unbelievable to see this kind of damage. You’ve just got to deal with it. There’s not much else you do,” Meeks said.

Rita Stark, a retired employee of the St. Marys Correctional Center and Jail, has lived in the trailer park for 18 years. She was home at the time of Tuesday’s storms but faired better than some of her neighbors.

“It was clear up until after 4 p.m. Then about 4:20 p.m. or 4:30 p.m., it all came through,” Stark said. “I didn’t realize it was a tornado. I just thought it was the wind and rain until the tree came down on top of my camper. I was fortunate, very fortunate, but these people aren’t.”

Stark and others compared Tuesday’s storms to the June 2012 derecho the left a line of damage in West Virginia stretching the breadth of the entire state, bringing with it up to 80 mph winds.

“This is the worst second worst since the derecho, but that wasn’t like this,” Stark said. “This was really something.”

“The only other thing that I can think of would be close would be that derecho that we had, but that doesn’t even compare to this,” said Jason Reed, the chief deputy of the Pleasants County Sheriff’s Department.

Reed said road crews were continuing to clean up debris across the county. According to Pleasants County 911, all unnecessary travel was being prohibited as of Wednesday afternoon. 

“I know there’s still some roads that are becoming more passable, but there’s still a lot of debris out there, broken power lines and all sorts of stuff,” Reed said.

Utility crews were working to replace broken power lines. According to FirstEnergy’s Outage Tracker, 1,257 customers were without electric in Pleasants County as of Wednesday afternoon. An AT&T was bringing in an emergency cell phone tower to assist with phone coverage.

Reed said despite the damage throughout the county, residents were working together to quickly clean up debris and assisting their neighbors in other ways, with no major injuries reported.

“Just basically, the community’s cleaning up their selves,” Reed said. “It’s basically just a community effort right now ... I figured there would be an influx of calls today, but we’ve been pretty lucky today. Everyone is chipping in.”