Along with fireworks, family, and fun, the weekend preceding Independence Day also brought a destructive storm system to the area. According to the National Weather Service, Salem received 1.2 inches of rain Saturday as a powerful storm blew through the area, causing wind damage to roofs and trees. Though there have been scattered reports of structural damage mostly due to falling trees and high winds, most of the damage was to trees and roofs, according to area officials who spoke to The Salem News via phone calls July 3.
Dent County Sheriff Bob Wells said he hoped the damage was light.
“Maybe nobody lost anything of great consequence, it’s just a mess to clean up. Hopefully that’s all there is,” said Wells, who noted that little major damage beyond trees and limbs had been reported to his office.
Dent County Presiding Commissioner Gary Larson said district two had seen some more significant damage. Though Larson is the presiding commissioner, he has been managing District Two roadways pending the swearing-in of the newly-appointed District Two Commissioner Gary Polk.
“We had several trees down. It blew some trees down on people’s houses out by my house,” said Larson. “(someone in the) Ray Oaks subdivision, he had the roof taken off his barn.”
Larson said county crews had been out on area roadways fixing wind damage.
“The roads survived pretty good, just the wind damage. We had to go out and remove trees and stuff like that, but other than that, it didn’t tear up the roads too bad,” said Larson. “We probably had a few washouts here and there. The guys mainly went out the other day just to take care of the wind damage. When they get back there Wednesday, they’ll fix whatever’s bad, if there is any bad. They’ll go check it and find out.”
District One Commissioner Wes Mobray said his district had seen some damage as well.
“We had some pretty good trees down on the west side of the county. I haven’t heard too much on the north or the east or south, but on the west side was a pretty good evening,” laughed Mobray. “I had a couple guys out cleaning that side up. As far as we know, everything’s been cleaned up, but it might be Wednesday before we really know. But those two guys drove almost every road over there.”
Mobray said much of the damage in his district was to trees that were already dead.
“Most of these trees were hollow trees, so they were dead on the inside but were still living on the outside. There was one spot where there were some good trees that fell over, and all the dead trees were still standing!” said Mobray.
The fallen limbs and trees caused headaches for utility crews, as thousands of customers were left without power on Saturday following the storm, according to Intercounty Electric Cooperative’s Director of Engineering, Dalton Clayton.
“That was the cause of the outages…the wind. Limbs, or whole trees coming down onto the lines,” said Clayton. “I think we wrapped up (repairs) yesterday evening, probably around four or five o’clock.”
Clayton said there was a total of 6,167 Intercounty customers who were left without power after the storm, but that number quickly decreased, he said. Many customers with City of Salem’s electric utility service experienced outages on Saturday as well.
“(6,167) out didn’t last very long. We lost a substation briefly. The main outage from damage was around 3,150 people,” said Clayton.
Dalton said there was no damage to the substation itself.
“It wasn’t any damage at all, Sho-Me cut all the feeders off briefly, and we brought them back on one-by-one, to see which one was bad. It was just causing issues. Nothing was damaged at the substation.”
Mobray said the damage could have been worse. Some were reminded of the Super Derecho storm that hit the area in 2009. That storm nearly flattened vast swaths of timber within a concentrated 17-mile wide and 100-mile-long path that ran along the Dent-Shannon county line and then east through Bunker and Fredericktown.
“I’m glad that the ground wasn’t saturated, because it would have really been bad. People would have had trees falling over everywhere,” he said.
