While a tornado did not touch down in Licking County during Tuesday afternoon's severe weather, residents on Newark's east side are cleaning up plenty of storm damage.
A microburst — a highly local, intense downdraft — ripped the roof off The Church Triumphant at the end of Madison Avenue and damaged trees within a few blocks.
Generators rumbled in the neighborhood Wednesday morning as electric crews installed new power poles behind the church. A block away, a small section of Fairmont Avenue remained closed as tree branches spilled into the street.
Neighbors drove by The Church Triumphant slowly to survey the damage. Yellow police tape encircled the roofless church.
Bill Lacy sat on the porch of the house immediately across the street. He said that's exactly where he was when the storm rolled in around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
"Everything got black and I saw it coming down as I run [sic] in the house. And when I come [sic] back out, everything was laying in the street," Lacy said.
The storm broke one of Lacy's windows and a mirror on his car, knocked down part of his fence, and damaged the spouting on his wood shop, he said.
It also left the church roof in the middle of the road, with some debris from the historic building blowing into backyards a block away.
The Church Triumphant Pastor Robert Caw said he was "in denial" when his grandson first relayed the news about the damage. Then, he saw from the highway that the roof was out of place.
"We were just in here on the weekend, had a great celebration with some people that were out of state," Caw said. "I came down and looked at it, and I couldn't believe it."
Caw has leased part of the building from YouSchool, the Christian homeschool co-op that owns the church, for the last 11 years. The school is on summer break, so no one was in the building during the storm. No one was hurt.
The pastor said the school had just put a new, roughly $30,000 roof on the building about a year ago.
Caw had not been back in the building as of Wednesday morning. It was unclear if the structure was stable or safe.
The pastor did not know whether the church could be repaired or how much that would ultimately cost. He said the insurance agent and YouSchool would have to determine the building's fate.
Caw said his congregation would meet in a home for fellowship Wednesday, and that eight pastors had offered to share their worship spaces. He didn't know which offer he would accept, but said he wanted to stay in Newark.
Despite the wreckage, Caw remained positive.
"You know, you go through times of tragedy, but it doesn't mean it's over. God's still on the throne, and he knows how to take care of his own," Caw said.
Just down the road, a tree in Madyson Priest's yard split in two and landed right next to her house. She said she's lucky it didn't fall on her bedroom, where she had been getting ready for work at the time.
"Everything on my dresser started shaking. Like, my vanity mirror looked like it was shaking. And then my dog started acting weird," Priest said.
She said other people who lived in the house came running up the stairs to her room, then they heard a "big boom" when the tree came down. About five minutes later she heard another boom, which was likely the church roof landing in the road.
"It was a lot of loudness within all in a matter of like five minutes. It was very, very quick," Priest said.
Licking County Emergency Management Agency Director Sean Grady said that aside from The Church Triumphant, most damage from Tuesday's storms was minor.
"Homeowners might feel a little bit differently about it," he said, noting that 'major' damage typically means someone can no longer live in the home.
Grady said that on Wednesdays there were "a lot of chainsaw crews out there, and a lot of tree companies," working to clear up damage.
Around 16,000 households and businesses lost power during the storm. By noon on Wednesday, only about 2,700 remained without power, Grady said.
In nearby Granville, which also saw high winds on Tuesday, tree branches sat in large piles along the road, waiting for pickup.
The National Weather Service confirmed two small tornadoes touched down in Muskingum County, east of Licking County.
Another tornado skirted the line between Trumbull and Mahoning counties in northeast Ohio, and a fourth landed in Clermont County, just east of Cincinnati.
