Wind storms delivered widespread damage in parts of Central Pennsylvania April 9.
Gusts brought down power lines, branches and several trees, including a large pine tree that fell on a house in Penn Valley Village mobile home park.
“We heard the tree crack and the next thing we know it was falling, just like somebody pushed it over,” said George Tunstall, a neighbor who said he was sitting on his porch and saw the tree fall.
The homeowner, 83-year-old Deloris Moore, was inside the house. She was shocked by the noise, her granddaughter Chrissy High said, but unhurt.
“She was right where the tree fell. She was coming out of the room where the tree was coming down at,” High said. “The force of it knocked her to the ground and she crawled her way up to get herself up and out of the house.”
The house is destroyed, High said, and her grandmother will have to find another place to live.
More damage nearby included a car crushed by a tree in Hershey, and a tractor-trailer accident on US-222 southbound. The tractor-trailer was blown off the road by a gust of wind, West Earl Township Police confirmed. A downed wire sparked a fire in Salisbury Township, according to PPL crews on scene.
Downed wires and telephone poles resulted in nearly 10,000 outages across the state at one point, according to PPL Electric Utilities.
“We`ve been putting smart grid systems on our system, which helps get people back into power much more quickly during outages,” said PPL spokesperson Jess Baker. “We`ve also been trimming trees so they don`t cause as much of an issue during storms.”
PPL expects further damage from the wind storm. You can view their current outage map here.