Havertown Hit Hard As Storms Blow Through The Region
HAVERTOWN, Pa. (CBS) -- The Delaware Valley was walloped by a powerful storm that brought heavy rains and strong winds Monday afternoon.
Havertown was hit especially hard, with downed trees and power lines throughout the community.
The Caroulis family is feeling both lucky and unlucky.
"I could tell that the wind was picking up, so I went down in the basement with my seven month old and my dog," Erin Caroulis said. "Heard a big bang and some whistling wind, but didn't think that this was what I was going to walk out to."
Not one, but two uprooted trees crashed into the Caroulis home. One tree struck the baby's nursery, the room Erin and her son were in before they took shelter in the basement.
"Thank God for cell phones because she was able to tell me she was okay," said Erin's husband George Caroulis. "By then, the storm was calming down because it happened so quickly."
A tangle of wires from a snapped power pole topped off the damage there, but surprisingly the home still has electricity.
"We've been pretty lucky so far, you can see the electricity is still on, even after that, so it's a pretty strong block" George said.
Employees of the Swiss Farms store on Eagle Road collected the pieces of a landmark that stood tall for 40 years.
"All of a sudden, we just heard like this crackling noise, and we looked and there was like, nothing there," said employee Dawn Gallo.
Straight-line winds brought down the market's 40-foot wooden silo. Swiss Farms CEO Scott Simon pledged to rebuild it.
"It's pretty devastating," Simon said. "After 40 years, it's kind of sad, but now we'll have something to look forward to for the next 40 years with a new one, so we're excited about that."
PECO reported more than 20,000 customer outages following the storm. The bulk of the outages were in Delaware County.
