Baseball Dugout Flattened, Power Outages Experienced as a Result of Tuesday’s Strong Storms

On Tuesday, Aug. 19, the Manchester area experienced strong thunderstorms and high wind.  A local weather station measured the strongest gust at 32 mph.  Thunderstorms and high winds occur when cool, dry air runs into warm, wet air.  As the two begin to move around each other and collide the motion causes all the rain and wind.

Those strong gusts of wind were enough to do quite a bit of damage around town last week. Two old pines were uprooted in front of Klager elementary, a section of the fencing around the athletic fields was crushed under falling debris, and one of the dug outs  by the baseball diamond was completely flattened. The brick walled dugout that faced the north seems to have acted as a sail, and a strong wind came against it, destroying it. It looked like a great hand had just casually pushed it over.

According to Terry DeDoes of Consumer’s Energy, over 18,000 customers were affected by the storms across southern Michigan. The largest outage in our area affected 1,117 customers in Manchester, caused by vegetation and the weather. That began about 5:25 p.m. and was restored at 11:55 p.m. Crews made repairs in several locations where primary electric lines had come down. Consumer’s Energy noted that it was possible that crews de-energized sections of the system when making repairs that may have affected customers not originally affected by the service interruption.

Village residents did note that different parts of the village lost power at different times. Notably, many residents came in to eat dinner at Frank’s because their power was out, but just as the restaurant was packed with diners, the 5:25pm outage began.

Consumer’s also asked THE MIRROR to extend a safety reminder: be aware of the potential for electric lines to come down during storms. Do not approach the downed lines, and report any downed wires to Consumers Energy at 1-800-477-5050 or by dialing 911.

Another service interruption, also due to the storm, affected 37 customers from 5:33 to 7:06 p.m. mostly on Logan and Boetger Roads.

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by Fritz Swanson

Fritz Swanson has written for The Believer, the Christian Science Monitor, Print Magazine, McSweeney's, Esopus, LSA Magazine, and The Mid-American Review. He serves as a trustee on the Manchester District Library Board. He's the designer and publisher of The Manchester Mirror.

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