A tornado touched down in Pittsfield during a storm that displaced six residents, Otsego County Office of Emergency Services said in a Wednesday, July 1 news release.
There were no injuries reported.
The Tuesday afternoon to night thunderstorm covered much of the region and caused many local residents to lose power.
OCES said in the release that its preliminary review identified four structures as a “total loss,” in addition to the displacements. The release stated that the National Weather Service in Binghamton had confirmed that a tornado touched down with a damage path along County Highway 49 near Ketchum Road.
There also were indicators of a tornado touching down in Laurens along Crawford Road near County Highway 10. Damage assessments remained ongoing, the release stated.
Pittsfield Town Supervisor Lisa Jackson declared a state of emergency at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Laurens Town Supervisor Dean Buccheri issued an emergency declaration effective 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Jackson said there were more than 200 tress down on Ketchum Road.
“I couldn’t even begin to guess the amount of trees that were down on (state Route) 49,” she said.
Buccheri was unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Both declarations included emergency orders under state law against unnecessary travel within the towns and cited impassable roadways. Each of the emergency orders had a duration of five days from when they were enacted: Pittsfield to end at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, July 5, Laurens to end at 8 a.m. Monday, July 6. The emergency declarations were scheduled to last 30 days.
The declarations are “not extremely valuable without emergency orders,” OCES Coordinator Victor Jones told members of the County Board of Representatives Wednesday morning. He added that OCES may meet with the supervisors to consider rescinding the declarations and orders.
Jones said that at that point in time, NYSEG predicted its “estimated time of (power) restoration” for all customers was 2 p.m. Wednesday.
At of 2:57 p.m., NYSEG’s online outage map showed 536 affected customers in the area. By 6 p.m., the number was 59.
NYSEG did not return request for comment by press time.
The Otsego Electric Cooperative experienced 700 to 800 outages at its worst, CEO Tim Johnson said via email. By about 5 p.m. Wednesday, he said, outages were fewer than 100.
Johnson said that some damage may require an extended period of repair.
“We had at least eight broken poles, wires down and other damages to fixtures,” he said, adding 12 to 18 employees had been working to respond to the emergency in addition to mutual aid crews that joined Wednesday morning.
“The electric and right-of-way crews have been out working continuously since the storm hit,” he said. Johnson said workers faced dangerous conditions “in wet and slippery heavy growth areas with much debris scattered on the ground.”
Wednesday saw its own dangerous weather with an extreme heat warning from NWS and temperatures surpassing 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Johnson said “we are guarding against heat-related illness and injuries while working as safe and as fast as we reasonably can because we know this is very difficult for our members, especially the elderly and disabled.”
National Grid spokesperson Patrick Stella said via email that “it does not look like we had any outages in that area resulting from yesterday’s storms.”
Board of Representatives Chairperson Ed Frazier Jr. said the county had about 20 workers responding on the ground in addition to a large number of local highway, public works and fire departments. He said three county crews were working on several roads on the area which had been obstructed debris.
“This was quite traumatic, it came through very quickly,” Frazier said. “And fortunately, there weren’t any injuries.”