County continues to pick up pieces after tornado
Days after storms crashed through sections of Delaware County, crews were still out clearing trees and rewiring utility poles.
James Raith, chairman of the Thornbury Board of Supervisors, said Monday that all the roads have reopened, and just 42 customers were without power. He expected that by the end of the day, all would have power restored.
“Right now, it’s a heck of a lot better than it was a couple of days ago,” said Raith, who is also a GOP candidate for Delaware County Council in today’s election. “Over the weekend, it was organized chaos. It was just getting to people. Today it’s getting a little more normal with people having access to roadways and for them to be able to get out and about.”
Crews in the hardest-hit areas were still removing debris from properties Monday.
Mark Jones from CJ Tree Experts was overseeing crews removing at least 20 trees from a property on North Lane and Skyline Drive in Thornbury.
At one of the homes, he said, the resident told him he was sitting in his family room when a tree branch crash into the house. They were not injured, but the home was damaged.
Jones said their company had two crews of eight each working in the general area, and he expected them to continue over about the next two weeks.
At the same time, utility companies were putting wires back up along Lockesley Road at Grist Mill Road.
Along with professionals out removing tree damage and fixing utility wires, township officials said they were working to coordinate with volunteers and others from the outside.
According to Raith, volunteers have come in from other areas such as a church group from Montgomery County. An organization made up of military veterans called Team Rubicon also sent a RECON team to see if they could lend a hand. He also credited PECO with coordinating to get power restored.
“PECO had people coming in from other states to help with getting power back on. It was a good coordination effort with everyone else - the township, the county, and the emergency service,” Raith said.
Tim Boyce, director of Emergency Services for Delaware County, said county officials were out every day over the weekend. On Sunday, they met with officials from the townships that had been hit hardest.
As of Monday morning, among the things they were looking at is to be sure the major roads were open and to coordinate any volunteer efforts.
Another thing Boyce said they wanted to be sure of is to make certain there were no issues with any of the polling locations for today’s elections. That means to be sure of issues such as keeping the power on at the polling locations. He added that sometimes when power is restored, it may only be with a temporary setup. So when the crews come back a couple of days later to turn on the power, they may need to shut it down again to reestablish the new lines.
Another issue with the polls is also to ensure roads leading to those polling locations remain open.
In eastern Delaware County, he said, if one street is blocked, it’s generally not a problem to go around to the next road. But in the more rural sections of the county that might be more difficult.
“We’re just making sure that we don’t have anything that obstructs polls or shutdown polls,” Boyce said.
Monday, it was generally possible to drive through the hardesthit areas such as Skyline Drive, North Lane, Locksley Road, Grist Mill Road and Broomall Lane. But with trucks having to take up some of the space on often narrow roadways, it was advisable to use other streets if possible.