Saturday storms: Round 2
Butler County Emergency Services reported more than 250 calls for downed trees, power lines and other debris caused by heavy winds Saturday afternoon.
Police and fire transmission on the county system was rapid-fire during that time, as emergency crews reported closing roads down and removing downed trees in every corner of the county.
Chris Leonardi, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, reported that trees were down in Cranberry Township, Seven Fields, Connoquenessing Township, Harmony, Meridian Road in Butler Township, Bonniebrook Road in Summit Township and Three Degree Road in Penn Township.
Sam’s Club in Moraine Pointe Plaza was evacuated in the early afternoon when smoke appeared in the building.
Sam Zurzolo, Butler Township commissioner, said a compressor affected by the storm began smoking.
At about 4 p.m. on Saturday, 20,529 West Penn Power customers were without electricity, which equates to more than 20% of customers in the county. By 5:15 p.m., that number was down to 16,697 customers without power. A Sunday alert from West Penn Power said the company expects to have power restored to "a majority“ of its customers by 11 p.m. April 4.
By 3 p.m. Sunday, there were still around 7,500 customers of West Penn Power without electricity. Central Electric Cooperative also reported Sunday afternoon than more than 7,300 customers in Butler, Allegheny, Armstrong, Clarion, Lawrence and Venango counties were without power.
The Jurysta children were playing Nintendo in their rooms on the second floor of their home at 315 Whitestown Road, in Butler Township, at about 3 p.m. on Saturday when the family heard two deafening bangs that shook the whole house.
“I screamed ‘Everyone get out!’” said their mother, Patricia Jurysta. “We didn’t know what was going on.”
When they got outside, they were met with a sickening sight.
“We saw the neighbor’s trees on our house,” said Charlie Jurysta, Patricia’s husband.
The three-bedroom, two-story home has been in the Jurysta family for more than 90 years.
Firefighters from the Butler Township Volunteer Fire District arrived 10 minutes later and performed a preliminary safety inspection.
“They said not to go in the house,” Patricia said. “There’s live wires over there, too.”
Charlie said firefighters were unable to turn off natural gas service to the home, as the valve was rusted.
“That’s just our luck,” said Charlie, who followed the firefighter’s instructions to call the gas company.
The family, which included Charlie’s mother and the home’s owner, Evelyn Jurysta, who was visiting her son and his family at the time, waited in their car with their two large dogs.
“The Red Cross is supposed to be calling us,” Patricia said.
Evelyn said the family suffered the loss of a mobile home in a fire in 2009 as well.
“This will pass,” she said. “I look at it this way: We are more fortunate than the people down south.”
She said the house is fully insured.
The scene at the home caused several drivers to slow down and gawk at the uprooted pine that struck the Jurysta house, plus two other large trees in the yard west of the home that had snapped off in the wind.
Just a quarter-mile away, Butler Township police had Whitestown Road blocked at Fairground Hill Road for wires hanging very low over the road.
All traffic detoured onto Fairground Hill Road.
A large pine tree also fell on top of a pickup truck on Winfield Road during the windstorms that moved through between 1:30 and sundown on Saturday.
