After a brief but severe storm ripped through the Ohio Valley Tuesday afternoon, there are trees down “all over” Ohio County and the Highlands complex is entirely without power.

There are multiple roads blocked due to trees and power lines that were downed in the heavy storms, according to Ohio County Emergency Management Director Lou Vargo.

Emergency response officials have been working to respond to calls and notify AEP of power outages. According to the AEP website, several thousand in Ohio County appear to be without power.

Vargo said there was one call of a tree falling on a house, which takes precedence over clearing roads or other obstacles.

Original story

Nearly 7,000 in the Northern Panhandle are without power Tuesday evening after a line of strong thunderstorms barreled through the area, knocking down trees and power lines with them.

According to the Appalachian Power online outage map, 6,931 customers were without power in Ohio and Marshall counties. The outages were focused in the area from Bethlehem south through Sherrard as well as Moundsville south past the Marshall County Airport.

Other larger clusters of outages are out in the Dallas Pike area and in Fulton.

Marshall County EMA Director Tom Hart said the storm system was still moving through the county, and that multiple fire departments were out dealing with downed utility lines, downed trees and transformer fires.

Return to theintelligencer.net later for more on this developing story.