Date: Fri 12-Jul-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

weather-thunderstorms

Full Text:

Area Roughed Up By Thuderstorms

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

A severe thunderstorms with a heavy downpour and winds up to 40 miles per hour

tore through sections of Fairfield and New Haven counties Tuesday evening,

knocking down trees, branches and power lines.

Margo Jackson-Douglas, spokesperson for Connecticut Light & Power, said Monroe

was the hardest hit, with 5,390 customers without power at the peak of the

outage about 10:30 pm. Nearly 3,200 customers in Danbury lost power, 2,600 in

Bethel, 1,799 in Ridgefield and 458 in Newtown.

The emergency generator was activated at the Hawleyville Fire Company when a

tree fell on wires along Hawleyville Road (Route 25). The incident caused

fuses to blow on a pole, knocking out the fire station's power at about 7:30

pm and activating the generator, according to James Crouch, chief of the

town's 911 emergency dispatch center.

The Dodgingtown Fire Company was called out twice, at 7:36 pm to an incident

of smoking wires on Towns End Road and at 8:01 pm when wires and a tree were

reported down on Poverty Hollow Road near the Redding border. The Sandy Hook

Fire & Rescue Company was called out at 7:54 pm for a tree that was on fire on

St George Place in Walnut Tree Village.

Most of the homes which lost power in Newtown were in the Meadowbrook-Platts

Hill-Hattertown area where 309 customers were out from 6:52 pm until 2:18 am.

Broken tree limbs littered properties throughout the area; a tree fell on the

roof of a small rental house at the Goodwick residence on Hattertown Road.

Another large tree fell on Dayton Street in Sandy Hook.

By 7:30 am Wednesday, power had been restored to all but 60 customers.

Twenty-six customers in scattered locations still were out at 3 pm but Margo

Jackson-Douglas said all would be restored by early evening.

Stateawide, more than 39,000 customers lost power at the height of the storm

which dumped three-quarter-inch hailstones and more than one inch of rain in

less than an hour in some areas.

Tornado warnings were issued by the National Weather Service at about 7 pm

when twisting winds were seen on radar over parts of Danbury and Redding but

none were confirmed as having touched down, according to the weather center at

Western Connecticut State University.

The storm had at least one positive effect, dropping the temperature and

bringing lower humidity in its wake.