Thunderstorms clobber Campbell
CAMPBELL — The eye of a severe thunderstorm Tuesday evening seems to have hovered over Campbell, with nearly 500 customers left without power for several hours, as well as uprooted trees and large branches scattered throughout the city.
Ohio Edison reported about 800 outages Tuesday between 7 and 8 p.m., but most of them were in Campbell, according to the utility’s outage report on its website. Power was restored to most homes around 11 p.m.
A tree was uprooted in someone’s front yard on Coitsville Road between Sixth and 12th streets. A tree also fell in the 500 block of Breetz Drive, damaging a fence, another was uprooted in a vacant lot on Coitsville Road between 12th Street and Breetz Drive, and one was felled at Wasko Funeral Home on Coitsville Road.
Susan Molina, who lives at the corner of Coitsville Road and Eastern Avenue, said she thinks the storm was a small tornado.
“It was crazy. I had just come inside after cutting my grass and left for about 10 minutes. When I came back, there was so much going on outside. There were branches all over the place,” Molina said. “It was horrible. Trees uprooted and there was so much debris everywhere.”
A tree service spent about nine hours at her home on Wednesday after a large branch fell from a tree during the storm, partially blocking Coitsville Road, she said.
She said a neighbor showed her pictures of the hail.
“It was one heck of a storm. It was just terrible,” Molina said.
Numerous trees also were knocked down at Roosevelt Park, including one that damaged a swings set and another that damaged a shelter house.
It was just about a year ago, Aug. 27, 2020, when another major storm knocked down or damaged trees, particularly at Roosevelt Park, where dozens of trees were toppled or had large branches knocked down. That storm also caused power outages.
Reporter Nathanael Hawthorne contributed to this report.
mreichert@tribtoday.com