At least 50 trees were leveled by the double derecho within the borders of Wheeling Park, but mostly minimal damage took place to the facility’s primary structures.
According to Nat Goudy, Wheeling Park manager, another 50 trees could be lost once a contracted arborist completes a total examination of the public grounds.
“It was bad when I first got here last Tuesday morning, but between now and then we look a thousand times better,” Goudy said. “Plus, we did not suffer a lot of structural damage. There is some, but in a lot of cases, if a tree falls exactly the other way, we have crushed structures. Take the Schwartzfeger Shelter for example; there are a lot of trees surrounding it, but only a branch went through the roof. If the same tree falls the other way, we don’t have that shelter anymore.
“The same can be said about the boathouse and the bandstand,” he said. “There’s some gutter and roof work to do on both of those, but other than that, those buildings are OK, too. It sure could have been a lot worse. It could have been as bad as it appeared when most people saw it the day after the storms, but we’re really better than it looks.”
The Path
Joelle Moray, the spokesperson for AEP and Appalachian Power, said the path of the unprecedented double derecho was clear to see when studying the outage maps last week. Last Tuesday morning, the power companies estimated as many as 16,000 customers were without electricity.
“The storms downed a lot of lines throughout the city of Wheeling, but the biggest repair that needed to be made was the downed trunk line that was headed toward the Garden substation in East Wheeling,” Moray explained. “That line was directly from the power plant, so it was very, very high voltage, and when it was downed, it was lying on W.Va. (Route) 2.
“We had a lot of people who came into the area to help our crews, and they worked around the clock until all of the customers were restored. In some areas, it took longer when those men and women got there.”
Goudy said at Wheeling Park, all one needed to do was follow the trees without tops.
“There are at least 50 trees that were taken down by the storms, and as we walked around the park with the arborist who has examined everything, I’m guessing another 50 may have to come down, too,” Goudy said. “The number has not yet been finalized, but there are more trees that were damaged pretty badly but are still standing. If you stand on the hilltop closest to the front of the park, you can see the paths of the storms and all of the treetops that the wind removed.
“Now that is without looking at the golf course, so I am sure the number will increase,” he explained. “The golf course is open, though. There’s just a little more to play around with than there was before last week. We cleaned it up some, and then we opened it back up last Thursday.”
In the Darkness
According to the National Weather Service, the double derecho traveled through the city of Wheeling between 1:15-1:45 a.m. with winds exceeding 60 mph and heavy thunder and lightning.
Electricity, Moray confirmed, was lost immediately by AEP customers from Marshall to Brooke counties.
“It was a good thing that the storms hit during the night because if we would have had our day campers here along with a whole park of people, we would have been dealing with a whole different set of issues; trust me,” Goudy said. “Now, I felt bad for the people in the neighborhood across National Road from the park because it took place at night and all of those people were most likely asleep. That area got hit just as hard as the park did.
“I believe in the long term the park will be just fine,” he explained. “We had some leaves in the pool, and that’s it; no damage took place to the White Palace or the tennis bubble, and once all of the debris is cleared, it will be difficult to tell that the storms even ripped through here. Trust me; it could have been a lot worse than it was.”
