BECKLEY, W.Va. — A series of thunderstorms which rolled through Appalachian Power’s service territory in three states Friday night caused widespread damage, but in Raleigh County it was worse than anywhere.
“In Raleigh County it really hit with a lot of intensity,” said company spokesman Phil Moye. “It was ‘derecho-like’ in the type of damage we saw.”
Crews faced hundreds of mature trees toppled by winds which measured 60 to 70 miles per hour.
“Huge healthy trees were completely uprooted and there were hundreds of them,” Moye said. “Many of them went across our lines and it’s just been a lot of physical work to get that fixed.”
As late as Monday morning, there were still more than 2,000 outages in Raleigh County alone, but Moye expected the bulk of those would be restored by Monday evening.
Unlike other storms, Moye said the heaviest damage Friday was in the Beckley city limits and ares immediately outside of Beckley. He said the storm didn’t cause nearly as much damage to the more rural areas where there were far more trees, which is usually the case.
“During a typical thunderstorm, you’ll some limbs to fall on lines, some lines will fall down, and you’ll have a broken pole or two,” said Moye. “But here you had large, healthy trees completely uprooted and the force of those trees broke multiple poles and brought down wire. Just getting those trees out of the way is a lot of extra work.”