Westmoreland County left tattered by tornado, strong winds

WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. — Officials with the National Weather Service spent the day studying storm damage in Westmoreland County on Monday.

Scattered widespread damage is the reason the National Weather Service believes a tornado did not touch down in Scottsdale.

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Although they determined one tornado did touch down in Westmoreland County, near the wooded area of Boy Scout Road by Smithton.

According to the National Weather Service, the straight-line winds caused more damage.

“It’s going to be a rough couple of weeks in Scottsdale. A lot of repairs need to be done,” Chris Beiter said.

Beiter is the acting manager at Brilhart Hardware, where part of the roof ripped off during the storm. He said the winds came and left within 20 minutes, and they used their basement to keep customers and staff safe.

“We locked everybody inside the building, including customers. At that point, that’s when the wind got bad and stormy, and when part of our roof decided to flip over,” Beiter said.

Now he says the roof will need to be fully replaced, and they are still working on cleaning up flood damage inside. The mayor of Scottdale called an emergency borough meeting Sunday night.

“Our main focus for the meeting last night was just to get all of council and all of leadership on the same page to make sure everyone had the same information. We also made the determination to try and help residents as far as debris removal from their yards,” Mayor Lindy House said.

That decision was to declare a state of emergency to get the funding people need to clean up. Officials with the National Weather Service say the damage is widespread.

“It was like 80 -90 degrees leading up to this event, and that helped fuel the instability and moisture in the atmosphere, and that’s why you can get these types of storms,” Shannon Hefferan with the National Weather Service said.

The mayor says power should be restored by 11 p.m. on Monday.

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