Strong storms tore through the area Wednesday morning, August 11 - knocking out power to thousands and causing damage to power lines, trees, and structures. During the morning hours more than 14,000 homes were without power. By 3:30pm that number was down to just 1,169.
Power crews worked their way through local neighborhoods getting power lines back up as quickly as possible. In Davenport, residents on Pleasant Street near Brady and Locust streets worked for several hours in the morning picking up tree debris.
Dan Fowlkes says while it was a lot of damage and work to do, it was nothing like the derecho that hit one year ago nearly to the day saying. "Last year we had a bunch of big old ones come off our trees over here and luckily they missed the house, but that was it."
Fowlkes says he and his wife were watching the storm Wednesday morning when they say one of the power lines spark up. Fowlkes saying, "The pole over here sparked, we thought maybe it was lightning. So, we ran around front you can see over here it was fire coming off that one right here. I thought it was lightning then I saw the tree and the big branch and figured I knew what would happen then."
What happened then was the power outage. But it was only a few hours before work crews showed up to help remove the giant tree from the middle of the road and fix the downed lines. "It was pretty quick actually. MidAmerican came over, the city still has to come over and clean that up. So right now they got that all chopped up and ready to pick up and they got all the lines back up and as soon as they check this out we should have electricity again."
For Fowlkes the few hours of made easier with helping hands. "With the help of our neighbors and everything it's been great help getting this up otherwise we’d be doing this for the next two days probably."
The National Weather Service reported heavy rain, lightning, small hail, and wind gusts upward of 50 mph.
Here are photos from viewers:
A tree took out the light at Brady Street and Central Park Avenue - courtesy of Corrinne Ray
Tree down on Riley Street in Davenport - courtesy of Tammara Utzinger Quinn
A downed tree just missed the house - courtesy of Valerie Salinas
A tree took out a detached garage - courtesy of Sarah Byrd
Porch steps rocked out of place in Atkinson - courtesy of Sarah Combs
Tree fell on the corner of Trinity Lutheran Church in Manlius, Illinois - courtesy of Steve Oloffson
Winds picked up and destroyed this trampoline - courtesy of Kristi Harden Downey
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