By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Monday night’s severe weather ripped up several roofs, knocked out electrical power and toppled a number of large trees in Liebenthal, 16 miles south of Hays on U.S. 183.
One tree fell across U.S. 183, completely blocking traffic. Working by illumination from vehicle headlights, two residents chopped the large tree into small enough pieces to move them off the road, reopening the highway.
Jim Huenergarde lives in the northeast section of the small Rush County town.
“I didn’t see any twisting, so I assume it was just wind — really strong straight winds,” Huenergarde said. When he ventured out of his house, Huenergarde reported seeing “debris and trash all over and many big trees blown over. The neighbor’s trampoline was blown over a block away.” His house was “plastered with leaves, small twigs and other stuff.”
Huenergarde said his neighbor told him they saw an electrical transform “blow.”
“They said it shot fire and sparks about 6 feet into the air,” he said.
Huenergarde was without power from 11 p.m. Monday night until 5 a.m. Tuesday morning.
Mike Morley, Midwest Energy communications manager, was in Liebenthal this morning where MWE employees are working to get downed power poles off the ground southwest of town. They will be replaced later.
According to Morley, Liebenthal and Schoenchen are served by Western Co-op Electric, WaKeeney.
“As their feeders to those cities are down, Midwest Energy is currently supplying energy to those cities from our system until Western gets their poles back up,” he said.
Video courtesy of Mike Morley
“Midwest Energy has at least four poles down with broken cross arms, south and west of Liebenthal,” Morley said Tuesday morning. He also counted about a dozen electrical poles snapped off for three-quarters of a mile along Highway 183 north of town. “The Western (Co-op Electric) truck from WaKeeney is in town, too.”
Morley said he saw two houses with major roof damage and several trees down in Liebenthal.
“The insurance adjusters were driving around, checking everything out,” he added.
There was also damage to power poles and Midwest Energy electrical outages north of WaKeeney and between Goodland and Colby.
“At one time, I counted 27 scattered outages in our service area,” Morley said. “Not huge, but it affected 300 to 400 homes.”