Storms cause damage, outages
As if in Act II in a play, heavy thunderstorms with high winds swept across the area knocking down trees and power lines and creating long outages of electricity on a Wednesday.
Storms swept through the area beginning at 5:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, as did similar storms two weeks earlier March 30.
Areas served by Northcentral Electric Association, North East Mississippi Electric Power Association and the Holly Springs Utility Department saw large and prolonged outages.
In Holly Springs, there were again a number of large trees that fell, knocking out power and snapping utility poles. Both electric lines and MaxxSouth lines were down.
Utility workers reported seven or eight utility poles down on Highway 5 in Benton County and six poles down in the vicinity of Contract Fabricators Inc. on Rolfing Road.
CFI offices were operating off backup power supplies after lights went out around 6 p.m. And were still without power at 10 a.m. Thursday. K.P. Vinyl was also out, according to a source with CFI.
Crews from New Albany and Tupelo arrived to help HSUD restore poles and power Thursday morning.
One area hard hit was at the corner of Walthall Street and Roberts Avenue where a very large tree fell over Walthall taking down power lines and MaxxSouth lines. Cleanup was underway by HSUD street crews and by contractors who were removing downed limbs and cleaning up debris.
Greg Griffin, mail carrier with the Holly Springs Post Office, was delivering mail on North Springs Street when he pointed to the security tape on Roberts.
“It’s the worst tree damages I’ve seen in Holly Springs,” he said.
In Senatobia where he lives, Griffin said the storm was more about flooding. He said Holly Springs is slowly but surely losing its trees.
“I’m going to miss some of these big ole trees,” he said, including the tree down on Walthall. “These trees add a lot of character to the town.”
A number of cedars and one old vintage tree at the northeast corner of the cemetery were lost.
Since no report was available from HSUD, which covers territory in Marshall, Benton and Tippah counties, residents helped out with area outage reports.
Those reports included:
• Holly Springs School District was closed Thursday, according to Superintendent of Education Irene Turnage. She said power was up at the central office and the primary school on Maury Street Thursday morning. Power was not restored at the Intermediate, Junior High and High School. Marshall Academy and all the county schools were open. Superintendent Roy Lawson with the county school district said opening was delayed two hours Thursday. Schools were closed Friday for Easter.
• Power was off 14 hours in the Cedar Hills area with a tree across the street.
• Power was out for several hours at Clancy’s Restaurant in Red Banks, and Tyler Clancy fired up the charcoal grill and served complimentary hot dogs and hamburgers Thursday for utility workers and first responders. A North Red Banks Road resident said power was off for 24 hours in that area, with some off even longer.
• Garner Road between Victoria and Red Banks Road remained out of power at noon Friday (nearly 48 hours) in a three-mile long street. A pole was snapped by a falling tree taking down power lines.
• Highway 7 North and Tara Oaks. Power was restored after 26 hours in the North Holly Springs area. The last storm power was off in that area for 22 hours. Some Woodward Avenue area residents were still out of power Friday but it was restored that afternoon.
• Laws Hill Road was out of power from 6 p.m. Wednesday until 8 a.m. Thursday. Highway 310 residents were out for nearly 24 hours. Power was restored, then went back off, one resident said.
• Electricity was out on CCC Road from 6 p.m. Wednesday until 10 p.m. It was back off Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
• Shingles, eaves and vent covers blew off the old superintendent’s office building with vents carried all the way over to Marathon on East Van Dorn. A tree was blown down behind the old building.
• Power was off at Willow Bend Animal Clinic on Highway 4 East through Thursday morning.
• Some residents in the Wildcat Bottom Road area were without electricity until Sunday — about 96 hours.
Northcentral Electric Cooperative
Michael Bellipanni, director of marketing and business development, filed this report.
“Outage reports began rolling in around 5:45 p.m. Wednesday as the storm hit the Pleasant Hill area of Olive Branch,” Bellipanni said. “High winds caused scattered outages in DeSoto and Marshall counties and affected nearly 800 members at the peak. Additional line crews and tree trimmers were called in around 6:30 p.m.
“We identified several broken poles and numerous strands of line down in both counties. Crews worked into the early morning until we sent them home for rest at 2 a.m. We called in one standby crew to work through the night troubleshooting and restoring outages that didn’t require extensive repairs.
“Fortunately, we had contract crews on standby to come in at first light Thursday to begin replacing broken poles and hanging wire. This was a unique restoration effort in that we had such scattered outage cases that affected double-digit member counts at the most. We’re thankful that all of this work was done safely and without incident.”
North East EPA
North East did not sustain much damage to its system from last week’s storm, according to Sarah Bishop, communication and marketing manager.
“At our peak, we had 1,196 members without power in Lafayette, Marshall and Union counties – including the Waterford area, which lost power from our supplier,” Bishop said. “Crews were dispatched and worked as quickly and safely as possible to have power restored to all our members within a few hours.”
Members in the Waterford area were without electricity just over three hours.