Wicked weather causes chaos for parish festival
SCOTT TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KDKA) -- Wild weather caused some havoc across the area last night, with wind and rain pounding some neighborhoods. Several events were impacted as well. It caused some at the events to have to run for cover.
Everything looked together and ready for a festival, but the storms last night left debris all over St. Raphael the Archangel Parish Festival in Scott Township. Volunteers worked through the night to get it back and running.
It started as perfect as could be for the parish festival – clear skies and thousands in attendance. Then, it turned for the worse.
"It just came in so quick. I've seen rain. I've seen storms. It's never been so much wind, so much rain, and everything so quick," festival co-chair Patrick Walther said.
Lightning was hitting all over the place and 7,500 people were outside on the church's Green Tree campus.
"It kept coming faster. The strikes kept coming faster and faster. 'Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?'" festival volunteer Ron Bruno said about the weather. "You've got lightning. The wind blowing. You've got little ladies with strollers trying to get their kids inside."
People were quickly rounded up and sent to the nearby school building for shelter. Booths were swaying in the wind, and in some cases, slid. Some volunteers stayed in them and tried to protect what they could.
"We had to tell them to just go inside. Your safety is most important of anything. We can replace anything outside," festival co-chair Peggy Sembrat said.
About a half hour later, Mother Nature's wrath ended.
"Everything just blew all over the place. We walked out after the storm passed, and were like, 'Oh my gosh, what do we do now?'" Bruno said.
Debris and trash were all around, the field was now a swamp, and some lights were twisted around.
"We spent a considerable amount of the night picking up trash debris and just where we're walking and booths along here," Walther said while showing KDKA the cleanup efforts.
And somehow less than 24 hours later, the festival is ready to go again like nothing happened.
Even with the storm and the moving of everyone inside and then back out, there were no reports of any injuries.