Tornado damage in Westmoreland County reaches $4 million
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Brian Steiner, of Greensburg, carries a grandfather clock from Shirley Clark's home Thursday morning on Fosterville Road in Hempfield. He said that he "saw things going through the air" from his home. The roof is gone from Ms. Clark's home. -
Brittany Zimmerman picks lumber from her father's truck while a neighbor's home sits in the background with the living room and kitchen exposed along Fosterville Road in Hempfield on Thursday.
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As residents surveyed the damage to their battered homes Thursday, the National Weather Service confirmed that it was a tornado with wind speeds up to 120 mph that carved a 300-yard-wide swath of damage through part of Westmoreland County.
But even amid the destruction -- felled trees several stories high, homes ripped from their foundations -- emergency officials said that the damage in Hempfield and Sewickley townships did not warrant a state emergency declaration. Officials said that affected residents and business owners likely would not qualify for federal disaster relief because most of them carry insurance.
Dan Stevens, spokesman for the Westmoreland County Department of Public Safety, said he estimated damage totaled at least $4.5 million, based on a previous estimate that 30 homes were destroyed and an additional 60 were damaged to some degree.
But emergency officials from the state and county who surveyed the damage had not encountered a single uninsured homeowner, Mr. Stevens said. It's one of the primary factors that federal disaster officials look at when they're determining whether a storm warrants federal help.
In that sense, the county had fared well with this storm.
"We just had one of the worst storms that we had in our county. ... now these people are going to actually be able to fix their homes because they have insurance," he said.
PG VIDEO: OFFICIALS ASSESS DAMAGEHempfield declared an emergency less than two hours after the tornado hit. Mr. Stevens said that if nearby Sewickley Township decided to make an emergency declaration, the county would likely follow suit. The declaration would allow agencies to bypass certain bidding requirements to hire contractors more quickly.
State and local officials fanned out to assess the damage. Mr. Stevens anticipated they would complete their assessment by today and he estimated that the county's initial tally of 90 damaged homes "is probably going to grow."
National Weather Service meteorologists determined that the tornado was an EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which measures the ferocity of twisters from a scale of EF 0, being the weakest, to EF 5, being the strongest. Based on the damage, they estimated wind speeds reached 120 mph. It traveled a path between six and seven miles long.
First Published March 25, 2011 12:00 am
