By Shavonne Potts
spotts@salisburypost.com
Judy Harley was sitting in her living room Wednesday afternoon when she heard a crash.
Strong winds stirring through her neighborhood brought a tree on the side of her property down, and it went into the kitchen of her home at 131 E. 11th Street.
“I didn’t know what happened,” Harley said.
Residents all over Rowan County reported strong winds taking out trees, knocking down power lines and damaging other property.
Harley and her poodle, Lexie, got out of the house safely.
She had only lived in the home for three months and was in the process of renovating it.
Harley’s neighbors came to check on her to make sure she was all right. One thing that was not lost on Harley was she just asked her property manager if she could place a small hole in the wall to insert a cable line. She now has a large hole along that wall.
The power was shut off and Salisbury fire officials searched for any hazards.
Minutes later, the fire department released the house back to Harley.
She went inside to assess the damage for herself and made preparations to stay somewhere else for the night.
Susan Morris, the property owner, said the story told to her was the original owners tried to get a permit to build in the 1940s, but they were unsuccessful ó until they got a permit to build a garage and instead built the small home.
“We are relocating them to another property,” she said.
Winds picked up in Rowan County around 1 p.m. and continued through the evening.
Around 1:30 p.m., Duke Energy listed 198 power outages in Rowan County.
About half an hour later, that number had increased to 230 outages.
Outages were reported in Landis, near Granite Quarry, on Graham Road and a cluster around U.S. 52.
As of 5:39 p.m. 1,756 outages were reported in Rowan County and just more than an hour later there were 1,201. By 9:30 p.m., the number was down to 430 outages in Rowan.
A woman at 1000 Julian Road reported the wind destroyed three dog lots, causing minor injury to one of her three dogs. Her five cats were unharmed.
Inez Parenteau said she was inside her mobile home in Lot 39 when “all of a sudden it got real dark and the electricity blinked on and off.”
Her dogs started barking, she said, and the mobile home felt like it was going to tip over.
“The next thing I knew, the dogs got louder,” Parenteau said. “It was pandemonium. I threw my coat on and ran outside, and my dog lots were completely twisted, completely moved.”
The South Salisbury Fire Department responded to the scene, and Parenteau said they called Duke Energy to come out and assess the damage to a utility pole.
Wind gusts up to 60 mph came through across the state, knocking out power to 50,000 customers in South Carolina. Duke Power reported almost 33,000 outages across North Carolina. Progress Energy had 52,000 at the peak of the storm.
The Associated Press and staff reporters Kathy Chaffin and Jessie Burchette contributed to this story.