Strong winds cause severe damage all over Northeast Ohio for 2nd weekend in a row

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Scary moments as dangerous winds, blinding lightning and rain, storm into Northeast Ohio for the second weekend in a row, leaving significant damage behind.

Roofs and even some walls to buildings blown away by wind gusts that reached up to 50 miles per hour on Saturday.

The widespread damaged touched nearly every community in Northeast Ohio, and left well over 100,000 homes and businesses without power.

Stark County was one of the areas hardest hit, as a portion of the roof was ripped right off of Glenwood Intermediate School in the Plain Local School District in Canton.

Riley Gerber who lives right across the street from the school tells 19 News, “I’ve never been in a tornado, but that’s as close as I care to come.”

Gerber suspects it was straight line winds that not only damaged the school, but toppled a large tree in his yard and snapped a utility pole in half, “Amazing. Big sheets of the roof just kept tearing off.”

Just down the road in Canton the back wall of the Holmes Seed Company literally blew away, George Long with Trident Restoration out of Tallmadge said, “Wind and water can do powerful things.”

Trident Restoration had 10 men on the job to build a temporary wall to safely secure the building, but, Long says they also had to address the roof, “We watched the roof go up about four foot and just sit there like someone was holding it.”

For the second weekend in a row in Northeast Ohio, thousand were left without power, as trees toppled on to power lines, leaving some dangling in the wind and others crashing to the ground.

As power crews immediately went to work to get the lights back on in communities like Euclid, for others the work is just beginning as they work to repair what was heavily damaged by severe winds that blew in and left their calling card.

Trident Restoration said they had at least a dozen calls about damage on this Saturday, and they had about 47 jobs after last weekends damaging winds.

19 News is working to find out if it was straight line winds that caused the severe damage in Canton. We’re waiting to learn more from the National Weather Service.

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