New Castle Recovering From This Week’s Storms, Tornado
Hard hit portions of New Castle were nearly back to normal on Thursday after a band of violent thunderstorms ripped through the town earlier this week and spawned a tornado, according to the National Weather Service.
There were 17 roads that had been closed immediately following the storms late Tuesday and were reopened by yesterday morning, said town Supervisor Robert Greenstein.
Millwood was the hardest hit area of town and multiple trees were toppled at the Chappaqua Crossing campus, Greenstein said.
An EF-1 tornado was confirmed when wind speeds reached as high as 110 miles per hour shortly before 5 p.m.
Only a portion of Route 100, between Pamela Place and Shinglehouse Road, remained closed yesterday because a tractor-trailer struck a pole and brought down wires, Greenstein said.
At least a couple of private houses suffered significant damage from fallen trees, one on Quaker Hill Road and another in the west end, Greenstein said. There were no injuries reported.
Most of the nearly 700 customers that had lost power during the storms had service restored by Thursday morning, he said. By later Thursday, the final 72 customers had their service return, Con Edison reported.
Greenstein said immediately after outages were reported a Con Edison liaison came to Town Hall and began coordinating with the seven available crews.
“The response was very good from Con Edison and the reason is the damage wasn’t widespread,” he said. “It was limited to a few communities and unfortunately we were one of the communities. But they were able to put of lot of resources in our community. We weren’t fighting over resources.”
The response by Con Edison and NYSEG following storms last March was harshly criticized by officials and residents throughout the region after thousands of residents were left without power for up to two weeks. The utilities were also blasted for poor communication and providing inaccurate information.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/