14 September 2008

Wind Damage OTR

..took some photos before it got to dark of the damage in Washington Park, Grammers and St. Paulus Kirche (at 15th and Race). There were tree branches everywhere, and asphalt and metal roofing in the street. School is cancelled at CPS, and there was a fire at Findlay Market in the north buildings. While I was there, the fire department left Grammers quickly because they got called to a building collapse. Lots of damage to lots of Historic Buildings today.

Now it is dark, and the Clifton/Fairview hillsides are all dark with no power, but downtown we have plenty. My relatives all called and they all are out of power too, all over the city. Wow.

Apparently at Grammer's the metal roofing blew over the cornice and hit the power lines, then the transformer blew and sparks started a fire on the top floor of the building just to the south of the original Grammers. The fire-fighters were working it from the inside, but they could not get a ladder truck, which they really needed. Finally one arrived, but the fire was then to the rear and tons of water was dumped on it, soaking everything inside.

UPDATE: Power outages and damage are much more than I knew. Downtown has power and all is pretty good, but no power, and no gas, and no stores open in most of the suburbs. In fact power appears to be out almost everywhere except downtown.

UPDATE 2: Sustained winds were 54 mph and gusts hit 74 mph. I have always wondered what that feels like. Now I know. We design new buildings here to resist 90 mph gusts.




















8 comments:

Mark Miller said...

Power stayed on in Hyde Park near Rookwood. However most of the surrounding areas went dark early and stayed that way.

At least somebody's doing well. The Rookwood restaurants and merchants were packed to capacity last night.

One of my clients had an enormous deisel backup generator delivered Friday before last. We scheduled an outage for next week to tie it in. Now they're powerless. Murphy strikes again.

Anonymous said...

Mike,
Was this storm the remnants of Hurricane Ike? Did it impact much north of Cincinnati?

CityKin said...

Yes, and no. It was partially caused by Ike, but wasn't really part of the hurricane. The affected area seems to be through Kentucky, and the Ohio and Miami river valley. I don't think it got that far north.

Anonymous said...

The wind got pretty far north. I'm a Cincy transplant in Cleveland for law school and there was some serious damage done by falling/uprooted trees. Also, a number of schools were cancelled and traffic lights were on the fritz all day. I never lost power, but I have friends that did.

Dan said...

Thanks for teh pictures Mike. Hopefully damage wasn't too bad around OTR that we will lose more buildings because of it.

bsherm said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bsherm said...

That was an unreal Sunday. I managed to get some pictures of the fires and effort to suppress at Findlay and Grammer's. It looks like the fire at Findlay started in a building across the street, to the west of Findlay.

CityKin said...

good shots sherm