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Clean Up, Repairs Continue After Sunday’s Storm

A Panama cabin uprooted and landed on its side 10 feet away from its foundation during Sunday’s wind storm that left over 1,500 county residents without power. Photo by Julie Conklin

Awe.

Even a day after “one of the worst wind storms” she’s ever experienced, that’s the only way Julie Conklin and her husband could describe the sight of their Panama cabin on its side as a result of the nearly 70 mph gusts that swept through Chautauqua County on Sunday.

“We live about 3 miles from the camp and the cabin,” the Ashville resident said. “We were just getting ready to go down to the basement at our house and we called my step-mother who lives just in front of our campsite so she could see that some of our stuff had blown over. She said it felt like her own house was going to come off the foundation.”

“We’re just still in awe that it actually must have picked it up because it was 10 feet from where it sat on its foundation,” Conklin said. “Next to our cabin we have our RV and we have an RV port. It’s supposed to withstand the 100 miles wind and it actually bent. It’s leaning toward where the wind was blowing toward it.”

Conklin and her family had their power restored by 7 p.m. on Sunday, but hundreds of residents across the county still had yet to have power restored as of Monday afternoon.

National Grid reported nearly 100 outages on Monday that have left roughly 1,700 customers without power — many of which are not expected to have power restored until this afternoon.

In Jamestown, Board of Public Utilities communications coordinator Rebecca Robbins said crews were expected to be working until midnight on Monday to address various isolated outages in neighborhoods across the city and service area.

The cause for these later repairs has mostly been fallen or uprooted trees that brought down lines and utility poles.

“Crews are working through a list of these remaining localized areas,” Robbins said. “City and private tree crews also cut away trees in order for BPU linemen to work to bring back power.”

The power went out around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday minutes after the “major weather event” and outages were reported throughout the city, West Ellicott, Celoron and Falconer. There has been no estimate as to how many customers were affected by the isolated outages.

In the north county, branches and flood waters ripped through Point Gratiot in Dunkirk, benches and garbage bins overturned at the City Pier and cement blocks littered Lakefront Boulevard following horrific winds Sunday night.

The damage was extensive in the city of Dunkirk by Lake Erie, but crews were taking inventory of the damage and have begun to clean up.

“The caps were pushed out, some into private residences,” Mayor Wilfred Rosas said in regard to the retaining wall pieces that have lain in the roadway over a year now. “The contractor we hired is down there right now cleaning up things. The cost shouldn’t be impacted as most of the blocks that were damaged we were looking to replace anyways.”

At the pier benches and trash cans were uprooted from where they had been cemented into the ground.

“We lost some benches and receptacles we think,” Rosas said. “We think they may have blown out into the lake. The ones that broke free will be gathered up and stored for the winter before being put back up next year.”

As for Point Gratiot, the flooding was extensive.

“Crooked Brook’s levels were very high Sunday night and the Point saw large amounts of flooding,” Rosas said. “The point is under the supervision of the Parks Division and they’re down there right now getting the damage inventoried and cleanup began.”

As for damages done to private residences that were affected by the storm, the costs are unknown.

“It’s probably close to one of the worst storms, as far as wind goes,” Conklin said. “The wind was bad. I’ve never seen the trees bend like they did.”

Jo Ward contributed to this story.

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