Winds – The Media Pub News (TM)

Hurricane Zeta: Widespread damage leaves 1 million without power

Zeta was the fifth named storm to hit Louisiana during a busy and brutal hurricane season. Its strong winds caused widespread power outages in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Hundreds of thousands of people were without electricity in states across the South on Thursday as Hurricane Zeta barraged through the region with powerful winds, shredding homes and businesses and knocking down trees.

The storm moved quickly, making landfall on the Louisiana coast as a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday afternoon. Before the night was over, officials on the coast had already begun assessing the extent of the damage and deploying workers to begin restoring power.

But by Thursday morning, about 400,000 customers in Louisiana were without electricity, according to Entergy Louisiana, while at least 600,000 across Georgia, 494,000 in Alabama, 277,000 across North Carolina and more than 83,000 in Mississippi were also without power.

— NYT: Top Stories

City man narrowly escapes fallen tree

Stormy, windy weather followed a Tri-state heat wave Saturday evening, leaving behind damages and inconveniences to some area residents even in close by downtown Trenton.

Andersson Veras of Trenton is owner of this car that is damaged by a fallen tree during the windy storm that ends a heat wave.
— Photo by Michelle Dryden

A Trenton City man, Andersson Veras, who lives on the 200 Block of Jackson St. lost his car of about three months and narrowly escaped getting hurt, when a sidewalk tree along the street fell across the windshield due to the force of the windy weather.

Veras, who uses his car predominantly for work, said, “It’s bad because I spend a lot of money to accessorize it.”

He also said he just parked and exited the 2001 Honda CR-V car about 20 minutes before the tree fell on it.

About this, he said, “I feel amazing that I was not in the car at the time. It could’ve been somebody else in the car.”

The fallen tree blocked the entire width of the street for about four hours before City Workers showed up to quickly remove it, so that residents can leave the block by driving their cars.

Most of the residents affected by the fallen tree were drivers on the 200 Blocks of Mercer and Jackson streets.

Peter Scaglione of 257 Mercer St., and his girlfriend ordered pizza in Morrisville, Pa., and experienced inconveniences when they tried to drive around the block from Mercer Street to Jackson Street to go pick up their pie.

However, they figured they could use the alleys from Clay Street, and across Mercer and Jackson streets as emergency routes.

Scaglione said that although the trees make the streets look beautiful, he always tells his girlfriend to be careful when parking underneath them.

A City of Trenton tree removal worker said, it seems there were termites in the tree that caused it to rot and fell during the windy storm.