Winds rip roof off of Arnold Palmer Motors in Unity
Mike “Moe” Garufi heard the strong wind Wednesday morning and thought it sounded like “a freight train coming through” the building where he reconditions vehicles at Arnold Palmer Motors on Route 30 in Unity.
The next thing he and about five other employees in the building heard was the roof closest to the Mountain Laurel Plaza peeling off, with pieces of metal sailing in the air and into vehicles on the dealer's lot as they ran out of the rear of the building.
“Everything had ripped off,” Garufi said.
None of the employees inside the building at 8:30 a.m. during the incident was injured, said James Flickinger, a manager at Arnold Palmer Motors.
“They were lucky,” said Flickinger, who also recalled hearing a roaring noise right before the roof was blown off.
A lower corner of the roof was still attached to the building, dangling over its side after the wind subsided. A Monroeville contractor was called Wednesday morning to secure the building, Flickinger said.
Wind gusts of about 40 mph blew through the Latrobe area Wednesday morning, said Lee Hendricks, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Moon. The dealership is about a mile south of Latrobe.
Whitney-Hostetter Fire Chief Anthony Matusky said winds were gusting between 35 mph and 50 mph during the hour they were securing the site.
Matusky said he called for a ladder truck to assist at the dealership but decided against using it because of the high winds.
High winds ripped the roof from a mobile home on 22nd Street in Derry Township at 7:50 a.m., a Westmoreland County Department of Public Safety supervisor said.
Bradenville Fire Chief Mark Piantine said the owner, John Desport, was not at home when the damage occurred.
“He came home and his roof was in his yard,” Desport said.
Winds up to 39 mph were reported in the Derry area about 6 a.m., Hendricks said.
Firefighters saved Desport's furniture from the rain by moving it to the center of the mobile home and placing tarps over the items until he could get a contractor to cover the roof, Piantine said.
Desport could not be reached for comment.
Piantine said that was just one of numerous weather-related calls that firefighters in Derry township and borough and Blairsville responded to on Wednesday.
“We've been running ... since 6 a.m.,” Piantine said Wednesday afternoon.
In Fayette County, part of a building in Connellsville collapsed at about 9 a.m. Wednesday during high winds.
No injuries were reported from the collapse of the wall of the abandoned building at 325 S. Pittsburgh St.
The building's owner, Marshall Pence, hired a demolition contractor who is expected to knock the walls down, possibly by Thursday morning, said Tom Currey, the city's health and zoning officer. The rubble will remain until the insurance company can inspect the site.
Prior to the collapse, city officials had expressed concerns about the condition of the building. Pence had resolved those problems, which were not in the area that had collapsed, Currey said.
The National Weather Service had issued a high-wind warning calling for gusts up to 50 mph Wednesday morning.
“The winds won't die down until Thursday night,” Hendricks said.
Todd Meyers, spokesman for West Penn Power in Greensburg, said there were some outages caused by the high winds, but “not a whole lot.” About 350 of the company's 70,000 customers lost power.
In Westmoreland County, about 250 customers were without power as of late Wednesday afternoon, according to the utility's outage map.
In Fayette County, Bullskin seemed to be hit the hardest, Meyers said.
“Even that was not that terrible, with about 160 without power at 1 p.m.,” said Meyers.
West Penn was prepared for the possibility of gusts of about 40 mph on Thursday, Meyers said.
Joe Napsha and Karl Polacek are staff writers for Trib Total Media. Napsha can be reached at 724-836-5252 or jnapsha@tribweb.com. Polacek can be reached at kpolacek@tribweb.com or 724-626-3538.
