Thousands of homes and businesses are without power as cleanup and damage assessment continues across Chatham-Kent following a severe storm Thursday night.
The Northern Tornadoes Project said teams will be surveying storm damage near Dresden and in the Chatham area to determine if a tornado touched down.
At the peak of the power outage, around 13,000 residents were without power in Chatham Friday morning, according to Entegrus. Over 500 were without power in the Tilbury area at the height of the outage, 347 in Bothwell, and another 146 in Erieau.
Vice President of Engineering and Operations, Tomo Matesic, told CK News Today that the damage is widespread and primarily from trees that have knocked down power lines and poles across the region.
"The challenge we're having right now is it's in multiple areas," said Matesic. "Our crews are spread fairly thin. We're bringing in additional assistance from our office in the northeast as well as Bluewater Power from Sarnia as well to address all of these outages."
At this point, there is no time estimate to get the lights back on, but Matesic said the company is hoping it will happen by the end of day.
"We have a lot of crews on the ground assessing damage and logging phone calls from customers," said Matesic. "We should have a better sense of assessment by noon today (Friday)."
Residents are encouraged to call 1-800-400-2255 if they see a downed power line and to stay about 33 feet back, or the length of a school bus, from any wires.
Power outages can also be reported by calling 1-866-804-7325.
Hydro One said power should be restored in Chatham, Tilbury, Grande Pointe, Pain Court, Erieau, and Walpole Island later on Friday.
"We have dealt with 41 live incidents in Chatham over the past 8 hours, and police have done about 145 calls," said Chatham-Kent Fire Chief Chris Case. "The good news is, paramedics have not had any injuries in this storm, and they've not been particularly badly impacted. So quick a bit of damage done, but no injuries."
Closures in Chatham-Kent
The Children's Treatment Centre of Chatham-Kent is closed Friday due to the power outage.
Kids Stuff The Family Learning Centre on the Thames will be closed until power is restored.
The Chatham Walmart will be closed Friday due to no power or internet.
All CK Rec Day Camps are running. However, due to reported storm damage and power outage at Erickson Arena our KIDventure Camp will be running at Kingston Park in Chatham.