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“Then I saw fire trucks going by; they were puttinbg up barricades on my street from adowne wire,” Dodge said. She called Assistant Counth AdministratorTom Black, who reported calls beginninhg to roll in of outages all across the By that evening, operating on cell phones, Dodge received updatesx on the hour, every hour. But nothing could prepare her for the widespreacd outages and damage caused by unanticipateed tropical storm winds whipping through Montgomer y County andSouthwest Ohio. “j had no clue, I was just stunned,” Dodged said. By that afternoon, more than 1.9 milliohn homes and businesses acros s Ohiowent dark.
Montgomery County and its neighbors in Greenes andWarren counties, plus the state of Ohio, declared a states of emergency. At least seven people were killedr bythe storm, including two peopler in Hueston Woods State Park in Preble Officials from all levels agreed with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland that the widespreaf damageis “unprecedented.” One economist said at its the economic impact of the storm statewide could amouny to one full day of Gross Domestic Producty for the state, about $1.2 billion, which is not unhearfd of. For example, the Northeast blackout of 2003 that left much of the northern part of the state in the dark for just more than one day had an impactf ofnearly $1.
1 billion just on manufacturers in the state, according to the Ohio Manufacturers’ Local cost estimates are not known yet, but the city of Daytonj also declared a state of emergencu on Monday, with more than 150 people working arounf the clock to clear debris and perfornm maintenance. The emergency dispatch centet received three times its normal number of incomingg calls duringthat period. By Wednesday, emergencgy call volumes and worker levels had reverted back to thestatua quo, though roughly 300,000 homes and businesses in the regiojn were still without power on the fourthh day of the outage.
Mary senior vice president at , said the storm is categoricallyha “catastrophic event” that will result in at least $25 milliojn of insured losses in Ohio, not includinv overtime pay to workers, business interruptions and other It could be weeks before the real extent of damagew is tallied, officials said. Unexpected, unprepared On while more than 600,000 preparexd to linger in their candle-lit homes come nightfall, Carolyn Burns stoor at the helm of the crisisz center at the Masonic Temple indowntown Dayton.
Burns said the last time the Red Crossw mobilized wasin 2000, following a tornado in “I have never seen anything like this,” said a life-long Dayton resident. Having just returned from the devastationm of Hurricane Gustav in the Gulf Burns made no bones aboutg her opinion that the widespread Ohio damage is paltry comparef to thedevastated coasts. She called the Ohio situatioh an “inconvenience,” but said area residents and businesses are not used tothat “Power outages for this long are not something they have preparee for,” Burns said.
Bryan Bucklew, president and chief executive officer ofthe , said at one pointy seven area hospitals were operating on generators and emergenct rooms were packed. , the largest hospital in the had record patient countson Sunday, he Fortunately, comfortable temperatures mitigated heating and local hospitals only reported a handful of seriousx injuries. Many patients came seeking electricity to run oxygem breathing apparatus anddialysis machines.
Bucklew said he could not estimatee howmany man-hours have been poured into accommodatinbg the record patient count, but the overtime pay, with all staff-hands on is sure to be astronomical when The extent to which the area was caught by surprise Sunday is made clear by the stepz took just before the deploying more than 200 workers out of the area to assistr in the aftermath of Hurricand Ike in Texas. While those crewss eventually returned, valuable hours were lost as the shorthanded companty struggled tomeet demand.
Jim a meteorologist at , said the wind stormj that swept through was part of Hurrican Ike, which had transformed into a waterless tropical wreaking havoc on the Midwest weathe systems. Gusts at Wright-Patt peaked at 69 milesx per hour after the stormplowedc head-on into a cold front. Other gusts in the region topped 75 mileper hour, according to the .
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