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A tree toppled onto a home on Shore Drive in Highland Park, on Grand Lake at the east edge of Celina.
CELINA - A strong line of storms packing peak wind speeds of 80 mph as they made their way from Jay County into Mercer County late Wednesday night downed several power lines and poles, took out electricity for thousands of customers and knocked over trees.
However, the county was largely spared from major property damage aside from a structure fire in Montezuma believed to have been sparked by a generator. There were also no storm-related injuries, to the best of authorities' knowledge.
"I think we're just pretty fortunate with what happened," said Mercer County Emergency Management Agency Director Chad Willrath. "There's probably some minor damage out there but nothing like we had in Memorial Day in 2019 or like what we had in March and May last year. It was a little different. Those (previous years) are actual tornadoes. So this was, I would imagine, just straight line wind."
When the storms entered Mercer County, the area was buffeted by torrential rain and whipped by powerful winds between 70 and 80 mph, Willrath said.
"That wind was coming in at a pretty good clip there," he said. "It was looking kind of bad there and kept getting worse, and I think we're just fortunate that we didn't get any tornadoes with it."
Mercer County Sheriff Doug Timmerman said the fierce winds caused headaches for the two main rural power companies in the area, AES and Midwest Electric, whose crews were sent rushing out in the night.
"Most of the (activity) last night was the power companies coming out, removing stuff from the roadway, and then moving on to the next call to try to keep the roadways open," he said.
Outage maps showed that 6,046 customers in Mercer County and 1,348 in Auglaize County were without electricity as of 11:15 p.m. Wednesday.
"We had a significant amount of power lines down, a significant amount," Timmerman told The Daily Standard, pointing to State Route 29 west of Celina, State Route 703 just off State Route 127 by Montezuma, Watkins Road, Carthagena Road and Fleetfoot Road.
"City of Celina had a pretty decent amount of them down, too, (and) a lot in the village of Coldwater," he quickly added.
In Coldwater, one of the fallen power lines was intertwined with a tree, causing it to go up in flames, he said.
"There was a large fire from the tree because the electric line was feeding it and they couldn't put it out because you can't spray water on the power line," he said.
Linemen were working on power poles in the area Thursday, including this pole on State Route 29 west of Celina.
A stretch of State Route 29 from Meyer Road to Fleetfoot Road was closed due to downed power lines and poles, according to Celina Mayor Jeff Hazel. The road remained closed throughout most of Thursday afternoon.
"Those belonged to AES that they had to clear," Hazel said. "But for Celina, we did really well. We fared well (Wednesday) night. There were no systemwide outages at all, just some spotty outages within Celina. So we did really well with it."
Many customers had their power restored by 5:30 a.m. Thursday, Timmerman said.
At Carthagena and Fleetfoot roads in Granville Township, a power pole broke and its lines came down on a Cooper Farms truck hauling turkeys, according to Timmerman. The driver called 911.
"We encouraged him when he called 911 to stay in the truck," he said.
First responders and AES crews were dispatched to the scene. Once the lines were safely removed, the truck driver was able to continue on his way, Timmerman said.
"We had a lot of help (Wednesday) night from MCERV (Mercer County Emergency Response Volunteers)," Timmerman said in a shout-out to the group. "MCERV saves us a lot of manpower."
Highlighting other incidents, Timmerman said a structure fire caused by a generator broke out in Montezuma and water lines burst inside of an apartment complex in Coldwater. There were also reports of some flooded basements.
"We didn't have any reports of (other major) damage, but then we did have people this morning that drove around three or four sets of 'closed road' signs," he noted. "They got tangled up in wires - the reason why the roads were closed - and they got them wrapped around the tires of their cars, and then we had to get them towed."
In Celina, a tree came crashing down near Mill and Blake streets.
"It still went over our streets, so we're going to take care of it," Hazel said. "We went ahead and cut it to take it off the roadways."
Overall, the city as a whole emerged mostly unscathed from the storm.
"We had a few minor outages on residential (streets) and that would have been mainly from wind and some (tree) limbs," he said. "But we did not lose power as a city. We were able to sustain it. Our system is pretty stout and we continue to improve it and upgrade it. So we did really well with it."
Yet Willrath warned that more rain is forecasted to be on the way over the next few days.
"We do have some more coming," he said. "Hopefully, the lake's low enough yet that it'll take it without causing any major flooding issues."
