CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Mangled trees and power lines kept a busy road in West Virginia’s Capital City blocked on the morning after a possible tornado that touched down out of Monday storms in Kanawha County.
“It’s wild,” Carly Costello told 580-WCHS, a MetroNews affiliate, as she carried bags of her belongings up the closed Bridge Road.
The closure, between Bridge Road Shops and the South Side Bridge, was far from the only one across Charleston as city crews, repair workers with Appalachian Power, tree removal teams and others worked to clean up from the storms.
David Trail, who lives along Bridge Road, was trying to help by clearing debris himself.
On Monday night, “I was sitting on the front porch and we just got these high winds very, very quickly followed by torrential downpours,” Trail said.
“It just came in so quickly. It was kind of scary.”
After receiving a notification about Monday’s Tornado Warning from the National Weather Service, he headed to his basement.
Costello was at the gym at the time.
“I just saw it (the storm) through the windows and I was, like, ‘Wow, it’s getting bad,'” she said.
Throughout South Hills, the damage was highly localized.
“It’s definitely hit and miss up here,” said Emilie Couch, owner of Yarid’s located at Bridge Road Shops. She lives in the Sherwood Forest community.
“We had rain, but it wasn’t bad where we were.”