Storms hit Charles hard

Much tree damage, no injury reports

Friday, June 6, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH Chain Saw Wiz employees use ropes to hold up a tree that fell on Paul Walters’ Evergreen Drive house in the Country Club South subdivision in northern Waldorf. The tree removal crew removed the trunk in smaller sections to keep them from falling on the damaged roof. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

‘‘We really dodged a bullet,” said Sheriff Rex W. Coffey (D).

Still, the chain of storms that took hours to blow through the county was ‘‘the worst in several years,” and took its toll, according to Chief Dan Stevens of the Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department.

On Evergreen Drive in Waldorf, a storm-blown tree crashed through the ceiling into the upstairs hallway of Paul Walters’ brick home. Walters’ daughter, Jessica, 16, was doing homework on one side of the hallway, and his wife, Lynn, was in the master bedroom on the other, but neither of them was hurt, he said. Walters was at the supermarket when the accident happened at about 3:30 p.m., but when he saw the huge oak embedded in his home of 16 years, he said, ‘‘I felt the world crashing down on me.”

Firefighters from the Potomac Heights Volunteer Fire Department helped Walters clear some of the branches from the roof, but the home flooded and had to be condemned because of the damage. Walters said it will likely be months before he can complete repairs on his home and move his family back in.

The Waldorf volunteers responded to more than 150 calls on Wednesday night, Stevens estimated, including one for an attic fire at a home on Red Oak Lane in Waldorf. During another call, the firefighters drilled holes into the roof of the Waldorf PetSmart to drain standing water and prevent a structural collapse after lightning warped the store’s gutters.

Firefighters also encountered slews of fallen trees and poles, and even one toppled chimney on Marlin Court in Waldorf, Stevens said. ‘‘Southern Maryland Electric was probably the only people in town busier than we were,” he said.

Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in Hughesville reported 15,000 power outages during the height of the storm, according to Thomas Dennison, spokesman. On Thursday morning, 3,843 customers were still without power, he said. Charles County and southern Prince George’s County had the most outages and 2,233 customers were still without power at mid-morning Thursday, Dennison said. In St. Mary’s, 838 customers were still without power Thursday morning and SMECO was still working to restore electricity to 772 customers in Calvert County, he said.

The waves of fierce storms that roared through the area made it hard to restore power and keep it on Wednesday evening, Dennison said.

‘‘It was just one of those things,” he said. ‘‘We made a lot of progress after each storm, but then we had another wave that caused more outages. We’re working as diligently as we can to get everyone’s power back on as soon as possible.”

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Elementary School in St. Charles was closed Thursday because of a power outage, said Katie O’Malley-Simpson, Charles County public schools spokeswoman. Power was expected to be restored to the school by Friday morning, she said.

Dennison said a damaged distribution line behind the school caused the outage.

‘‘It had significant damage, and we couldn’t get heavy equipment in there,” he said. ‘‘We had to climb the poles manually; we had to do a lot by hand so it’s taking more time to fix it.”

La Plata fared well during the storms, said Town Manager Daniel Mears, adding that the town’s emergency siren system went off without a hitch around 8 p.m. during the second round of storms.

‘‘La Plata weathered the storm pretty well,” he said.

‘‘The sirens worked perfectly.”

The town opened up the La Plata Police Department on La Grange Avenue as a shelter, Mears said. A few town residents took advantage of the building’s safety during the height of the early evening storm.

Mayor Gene Ambrogio said that the town mainly had the same problems that the rest of Charles County experienced during the storm, including a few downed trees. ‘‘There were no reports of any significant damage,” he said.

Although radio and television reports said that a tornado was confirmed in the Bel Alton area, Bel Alton Volunteer Fire Department Chief Larry Nyers said the volunteers did not respond to any tornado-related calls.

‘‘We didn’t run any calls in this area; we ran more calls up in La Plata,” he said. ‘‘We had a lot of rain and lightning, but we didn’t see a tornado.”

Rumors of a tornado hopping through the western part of the county were enough to send attendees at a public meeting scrambling to the hallways of the Nanjemoy Community Center. Johnnie DeGiorgi, candidate for the District 2 commissioner seat in 2010, indulged in a little dark humor.

‘‘I may not live to be county commissioner,” DeGiorgi announced. Turning to the host of the meeting, developer Cornell Posey, DeGiorgi said, ‘‘I leave everything to Cornell!”

According to Commissioner Edith J. Patterson (D), there was a similarly intense scene at an event at the Waldorf Jaycees center when news of the alleged tornado was announced.

‘‘It was just like one of those Will Smith movies,” Patterson recalled Thursday. ‘‘Everyone ran.”

Patterson said she couldn’t head for her home in Pomfret because she would have been heading toward the storm. Instead, she sought shelter at the sheriff’s office’s Waldorf substation.

Billy Robertson, owner of Robertson’s Crab House on Cobb Island, said the island weathered the storm with only the expected damage, including downed trees. ‘‘There wasn’t any tornado activity; what I saw was just straight-line winds,” he said. ‘‘I have a very good view of the [Potomac] River from the restaurant. I’ve experienced many bad storms over the years and this was just a storm with severe wind.”

No storm-related injuries were reported to authorities, Coffey said.

Coffey was one of the thousands whose electricity was hit last night, which meant he did his showering and shaving at the sheriff’s office Thursday morning. He said many of his neighbors are in the same situation.

But for all the howling winds, ‘‘it was pretty quiet,” Coffey said.