Tornado hit more of Avon Lake than first thought; cleanup finally wraps up

A tornado that struck Lorain County last week hit more of Avon Lake than first thought, and it was followed by a second twister in neighboring Bay Village, according to the National Weather Service of Cleveland. The storm lashed the county and much of Northeast Ohio with winds in excess of 80 mph and created five separate tornadoes on Aug. 6. One of those tornadoes touched down in Avon Lake and was initially reported to have started in the eastern part of the city before quickly moving into Bay Village. On Monday, the NWS Cleveland said that the storm actually started farther west in the Miller Road area, traveling across most of Avon Lake, clear across Bay Village and into Rocky River before lifting back up. The tornado registered as an E-F1 on the Fujita scale, with estimated maximum winds of 110 mph. The path was just under 12 miles long with a maximum width of 200 yards. Shortly after the Avon Lake tornado touched down, another tornado began in Bay Village, this one starting just south of Lake Erie and carving a path southeast into Westlake. That tornado also had an EF-1 rating and maximum wind speed of 110 mph, but it was much shorter, with a path of only 1.75 miles. Zach Sefcovic of the NWS Cleveland said that straight line winds that hit across Northeast Ohio were just as damaging as the tornadoes. "With this event that we had on Aug. 6 we had a lot of straight line wind damage all throughout the Cleveland metro area," Sefcovic said. Structural damage was limited, but tree damage was significant and downed power lines led to more than 350,000 people in the region being without power. Sefcovic said that was the highest number of people ever to lose power in the region due to a weather event, topping the previous high of around 310,000 in July 1995. Cleanup from the storm progressed over the last week. On Monday, the Illuminating Co. published a statement on its Facebook page that read power had been restored to 98 percent of the company's customers affected by the storms. Parent company FirstEnergy initially estimated that many customers wouldn't have their power restored until Wednesday. The Illuminating Company's statement also read that outage crews replaced 400 power poles and 195 transformers, as well as just under 190,000 feet of wire and cable, as of Sunday. City leaders have commended their police and fire departments for their work. Avon Lake Mayor Mark Spaetzel released a statement Sunday on Facebook praising city employees and power crews, as well as the "strength, compassion and resiliency" of Avon Lake residents. "Through adversity, we came together, supported one another, and showed the true meaning of community," Spaetzel's statement read. "Every crisis we overcome creates resiliency and we will continue to learn from our experiences." About 40 percent of Avon Lake residents lost power due to the storm, according to FirstEnergy outage maps last week. The impact was felt even harder in Avon, where up to 70 percent of customers lost power. During the City Council meeting on Monday, Avon Mayor Bryan Jensen also credited the response of safety services and the patience of Avon residents, and he asked Council for an appropriation to replace food residents lost due to the power outages. Jensen said he understands residents' frustrations with the speed of power restoration being founded on "just not knowing" how long the outages would last. "I was very proud of how the city handled the outage in terms of trying to get to people," Jensen said. "For the most part, we all fared well — no one was injured … I understand the frustration and we're here to take some of the brunt for that." Duane Streator, Avon's safety and services director, said at the meeting that Avon fire received 122 calls and Avon Police received 237 on the day of the storms. Sheffield Lake Mayor Rocky Radeff also commended his city's fire and police departments at Council on Tuesday. "We saw a lot of people step up and offer their houses to charge phones, use electricity, store food, things like that," Radeff said. "It was amazing to see that. But obviously, we want to make sure we credit our service departments." Contact Richard Perrins at (440) 687-5172 or email rperrins@chroniclet.com. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.