Leaf Thursday, August 15, 2024 Vol. 30 No. 33 • Chardon, Ohio www.geaugamapleleaf.com $1.25
DeWine Declares State of Emergency
West Geauga Supt. Talks Cell Phone Policies page 4
Middlefield Village Income Tax Revenue Down, But Sky isn’t Falling,
By Amy Patterson
page 6
amy@karlovecmedia.com
After a powerful storm tore its way across Northeast Ohio Aug. 6 — dropping five tornadoes, including one in Chester Township — Gov. Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency Aug. 10 to help expedite state assistance to eight affected counties. The declaration of emergency covered seven storm-ravaged counties in addition to Geauga — Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Portage, Summit and Trumbull. "This declaration of a state of emergency will give the state the ability to give these communities expedited assistance,” DeWine said, adding that at the time, the state did not have any outstanding See Emergency • Page 1
Propose Dollar General Purchase Officially Over page 6
Opinion page 14
SUBMITTED
Tornado, High Winds Cause Power Outages By Ann Wishart ann@karlovecmedia.com The roar of generators and the buzz of chain saws echoed around Geauga County Aug. 7 and 8 as residents dealt with the aftermath of five tornadoes that tore through Northeast Ohio Tuesday evening. The National Weather Service reported one EH-1 tornado cut a swath through Kirtland, Chester Township and ended at Wilson Mills Road in Munson Township.
Crews work on repairing the damaged steeple of Mayfield Methodist Church in Chester Township.
page 15
Maple Leaf readers submitted images of storm damage like the one above, posted by Jane Milbourn Neubauer, depicting the state of their sugar house in Munson after severe high winds and a tornado blew through the county Aug. 6.
Chester Sustains the Worst Damage
ANN WISHART/KMG
Obituaries
See page 9 for more submitted photos of storm damage throughout the county.
Chester Hit Hardest “I watched the Chesterland tornado rip through our pasture as we went to the basement,” Robert
Ciszak commented on a Facebook post. “Rain was coming through closed windows like they weren’t there. In the end — Boulder Glen is decimated. Hundreds of trees down, two houses (ours included) with trees on them or in them. We had two vehicles crushed. Our street has worked together and we have a lot cleaned up from what it was — but there’s 30 years of damage done.” Chester was hit hardest in the county. At one point, so many trees came down across electric wires that most of the township was without power, said Chester Township Fire Chief Bill Shaw in a phone interview Aug. 12. “I’d estimate we were in the
Sheriff’s Sales & Legal Notices start on page 16
Classifieds page 20
90% range,” he said. “We did have a substantial number of trees down. It’s so forested here, when they come down, they get tangled up in the wires.” When that happens, the area loses power until the wires can be cleared, he said. Chester Township Fire Department fielded 53 calls for service in the first six hours after the storm, said firefighter Mike Gibson Aug. 9, adding they had close to 100 storm-related calls by noon last Friday “We had a lot of trees fall into houses and a lot of electrical problems. It was definitely unusual for us,” he said. “We had crews out throughout the storm handling See Storm • Page 8
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