March Winds

Another blast from Mother Nature has caused chaos throughout the region.

A violent storm with wind gusts clocked at 65 mph at the Western Connecticut State Weather Station in Danbury, combined with more than 3.5 inches of rain, pummeled eastern Putnam County Saturday and early Sunday, saturating the ground and resulting in the uprooting of trees, splintering of timber, and snapping limbs onto utility lines. The storm KO’d power to more than 23,000 Putnam residents at its height.

New York State Electric and Gas Company crews became overwhelmed by the amount of disruptions and management summoned crews from upstate to assist in the massive restoration process.

While the western side of the county received the brunt of the late winter snow storm two weeks ago, last weekend’s calamity affected primarily eastern Putnam with Carmel, Mahopac, Southeast, and Patterson hardest hit.

A huge tree fell across Stoneleigh Avenue in Carmel near Kelly Road. Route 301 was closed from Fowler Avenue west due to a tree owned by the New York City DEP splitting as a result of the gale force winds off Lake Gleneida that crashed onto utility lines.

Wixon Pond Road in Mahopac suffered numerous downed trees, as did Gipsy Trail Road in Kent. Cushman Road and Cornwall Hill Road in Patterson were also hard hit by the strong winds.

In Patterson, a building housing the town’s sewage treatment plant off Cornwall Hill Road ignited when a generator used to power the system during the outage accidentally incinerated outside wooden shingles which set the building ablaze.

Fire departments and emergency crews were run ragged for the second time in three weeks since every fire department countywide was summoned to respond to calls for burning wires, transformer fires, basement pump outs, and people falling after tripping on debris, as well as assisting highway crews and police with closing roads.

The Putnam 911 Dispatch Center received 598 calls for assistance during the storm.

Police in Putnam reported no serious injuries resulting from Mother Nature’s latest

salvo. ­—

Eric Gross