Staff Report
Eight beef cows in Garrattsville died Tuesday after trees apparently fell onto them as a result of severe storms, a farmer said.
"We know lightning hit close,'' said Lenny Melillo of Kane Road. "We feel bad.''
Elsewhere in the area and the state Wednesday, electrical utility crews were restoring power to customers left in the dark after Tuesday's storms.
Melillo said he suspected lightning hit the trees, where eight cows were either bedded down or standing beneath the boughs. Lightning had struck nearby, giving a slight jolt to an employee leaning on an appliance in the workshop, he said.
Melillo said he and his wife, Laurie, started raising Black Angus beef in 1995. Two of 24 in the herd were hurt in Tuesday's storms, but they are expected to be all right. He estimated the loss of the eight at about $8,000.
Melillo, who has an excavating business, said he has buried other people's animals but was saddened to bury his own Wednesday. No similar incident had happened on his hobby farm, he said.
"It was just a freak thing, I guess,'' Melillo said.
Emergency officials in the area reported few problems from the storms other than wires and trees down and sporadic power outages.
Ann Carnrike, spokeswoman for New York State Electric & Gas Corp., said about 3,200 customers in the Oneonta area lost power Tuesday night, but electricity was restored to most by Wednesday morning. By the end of the day, service remained out to about two customers, she said.
The Associated Press reported that tens of thousands of residents from Rochester to the Catskills remained without electricity Wednesday and some may not regain power until Friday. Authorities in St. Lawrence County issued an advisory against unnecessary travel because of extensive storm damage there.
National Grid reported about 32,400 of its customers were without power Wednesday, with the hardest-hit areas in Oswego, Lewis, Franklin and St. Lawrence counties. The utility said as many as 68,000 of its customers were without power at the peak of the storm.
NYSEG reported about 9,500 without power, most of them in the Catskills.
A NYSEG media release Wednesday said 12,000 customers in the Liberty Division, which includes all or parts of Delaware, Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties, had no power at the peak from Tuesday's storms. On Wednesday afternoon, 5,645 customers remained without electricity.
The storms were blamed for at least two deaths. A 47-year-old logger was killed in Lewis County when he was hit by a tree downed by high winds, authorities said, and a 51-year-old Pennsylvania man died after his motorcycle hit a tree that had fallen across an Adirondack road.
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