More than 140-thousand customers of Dominion Virginia Power are still without power after last night's storm took down trees and powerlines with winds that reached 70 miles an hour.
Henrico County and Richmond's east end endured the brunt of the damage, the former among the hardest hit with 85-thousand customers still without power this afternoon.
One victim of the storm was a historic home in Richmond's Ginter Park neighborhood. Known as "Holly Lawn," the home was built in the early 20th century and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Kathy Consuegra's parents have lived in the home for 12 years.
"The community has come out and rallied," says Consuegra. "They’ve brought coffee, they’ve brought pizza for the guys cutting the tree down, they’ve brought ham biscuits for my family. The community support that’s come around this historic home has just been tremendous. And everybody that walks by gets teary eyed about this house that they’ve walked past for all these years."
The National Weather service says, despite appearances, a tornado did not touch down in the area.
“It was a strong ... bow echo that moved across the metro-Richmond area," said Lyle Alexander of the Wakefield, Virginia office of the National Weather Service. "The area that was hit strongest was across the north side of Richmond. And (there was) widespread wind damage – probably just a lot of trees down and power outages across that area, and winds in excess of 70 miles per hour.”
Schools in Henrico County and in Richmond were closed today, as officials scramble to put crews of contractors and city workers across departments to work addressing storm damage.
The Richmond Public School system reports 10 school buildings were damaged.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the City of Richmond plans to send out 50 crews to assess damages by the end of Friday.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch is also reporting that a person in Hanover was left seriously injured after a tree fell on their home. Hanover also saw at least two structure fires as a result of the storm.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Bryan Jackson says the weather service received eye-witnesses reports of a tornado near Berryville in Clarke County about 6 p.m. Thursday. He says storm surveys will be conducted Friday to determine whether there was a tornado.
Dominion says some outages could last multiple days, due to severe damage to utility lines.
The utility warns people to stay at least 30 feet away from downed wires and report them by calling 866-DOM-HELP.
