Photo provided Columbus resident Megan Valek photographed this downed tree blocking the intersection of Chestnut and 16th streets on Thursday.
Cleaning up has started after a severe thunderstorm barreled through Bartholomew County on Thursday afternoon, leaving numerous trees down and knocking out power to thousands of residents.
The storm, which struck Bartholomew County in the late afternoon, had wind gusts of 50 to 70 miles per hour and dumped about 0.42 inches of rain on the city of Columbus, according to the National Weather Service’s Indianapolis office.
Winds and falling tree limbs knocked down power lines across the county and damaged at least two circuits in the Elizabethtown area, resulting in, at one point, just over 11,160 outages in Duke Energy’s Columbus district — which includes all of Bartholomew County and part of Brown County — with an additional 2,000 Bartholomew County REMC customers without power.
Some roads were closed due to fallen trees, officials said.
“We did have damage in nearly every one of our 28 districts in the state, but Columbus was among the hardest hit,” said Duke Energy spokeswoman Angeline Protogere.
Shortly after 9 a.m. Friday, Duke Energy was still working to fix at least 2,000 outages in the Columbus area, while Bartholomew County REMC was reporting about 100 customers still without power and 20 separate outages.
Protegere said Duke Energy officials are working to assess damage and fix the outages but did not provide a timeline for when the company expects power to be restored.
Marty Lasure, vice president of communications and member services at Bartholomew County REMC, said she was anticipating that power would be restore to all customers by the end of the day Friday.
“We appreciate the patience,” Lasure said. “This is one of the bigger storms that we’ve dealt with in a while.”
Officials at the Columbus Department of Public Works has been busy “making our way through the neighborhoods” to clean up fallen trees, said Keith Robbins, the department’s administrative assistant. At the same time, the Columbus Fire Department also was “inundated” with emergency calls Thursday afternoon, said CFD spokesman Capt. Mike Wilson.
“Many of those were for reports of transformer fires, reports of power lines down, reports of trees down on power lines,” Wilson said. “For a good period of time, we were responding out to those types of calls. We also had some reports of damage to some of the buildings in the community.”
Wilson urged residents to be careful around down power lines and assume that they are still electrically charged.
“We want the community to know that there is a serious danger with downed powerlines,” Wilson said. “…When they are surveying damage around their home or they’re trying to remove debris around their home, they should definitely stay away from any of those downed power lines and should treat those as if they are still electrically charged. Even though a line may be down, it still may be a live line and presents an electrocution danger.”
Robbins said the Columbus Department of Public Works is advising residents to stack tree limbs by their curb as long as they are no more than 6 feet long.
“We’re just asking people to stack the limbs by their curb,” Robbins said. “If they have any down in their yards, no more than 6 feet long. If they’re able to cut that down, if there are any in the street there by their house, if they have the means to pull it out of the street to help us out without getting hurt, that would be great. We’re going by an emergency basis is kind of how doing it. …We’re making our way through the neighborhoods.”
“If they have a tree blocking the street, they can call … and let us know,” Robbins added. “We probably already know about it, but we welcome their call to let us know. There may be one we don’t know about yet.”
The Columbus Department of Public Works can be contacted at 812-376-2508.
While the clean-up efforts continue, meteorologists and other officials are warning of the potential for more rounds of thunderstorms this weekend.
Multiple rounds of severe weather are possible through Sunday evening, said Shannon Cooke, director of Bartholomew County Emergency Management. That includes slight risks Friday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday afternoon and night and Sunday afternoon and evening.
“Damaging winds, large hail, isolated tornadoes, and heavy rain/localized flooding are all possible,” Cooke said.
