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By Heather Stauffer, August 26, 2007

Last updated: Sunday, August 26, 2007 12:33 AM EDT

The heat that gripped Cumberland County Saturday exploded into a series of strong storms by evening, leaving destruction in its wake.

Much of the scattered damage appeared to center in Carlisle Borough, where Mayor Kirk Wilson said the county's special police emergency response team had been called in to help.

“It's really hard to get a handle on the damage right now,” Wilson said Saturday evening.

Large portions of the borough were without electricity and traffic and street lights were also dark. Police had to evacuate some residents from the 100 block of Cedar Street because “we had electrical wires arcing and a gas leak simultaneously,” Wilson said.

The borough activated its municipal work crews to handle the more than 30 locations that have reported downed trees and limbs. “Obviously all the utilities are tied up,” Wilson said.

There have also been reports of trees on vehicles, he said, and the storm had caused an abrupt end to the 7 p.m. parade of Corvettes from Carlisle Fairgrounds, where the world's largest gathering of Corvettes was in progress.

Cumberland County public information officer John Bruetsch said one man was taken to the hospital with moderate injuries after a tree fell on his Corvette at the show.

Several other people were also taken to the hospital with lesser injuries, he said, and crews were working to make sure that there were no more injuries and to extricate some vehicles from beneath collapsed tents. It was uncertain, he said, whether the show would open today.

PPL spokesman James Nulton said that more than 11,300 power outages had been reported Saturday night, with the bulk of them - 6,046 - in Carlisle. Also feeling the force of the storm were Harrisburg, with 3,182 outages, and West Shore, with 1,965.

“There's a pretty good storm,” Nulton said. “We'll be working all night, into tomorrow morning.”

Downed trees have been reported all over the place, he said, and the crews will be able to make better progress on them in daylight. Crews will probably have “a good handle” on the damage by Sunday night, he said.

Because of the outages, Wilson said, the police department sent people on patrol to guard the dark homes and businesses.

State police in Carlisle said they received numerous reports of downed wires and trees, with the damage closing Bonnybrook Road for a while.

The storm also hit Dickinson College, where students were just getting settled in for a new semester.

“We have lost some power to some residence halls,” said college spokeswoman Christine Dugan, noting that none of the largest residence halls seemed to be affected. Displaced students were gathered in the Holland Union Building, she said, and if the power wasn't restored in time to send them back to their rooms, staff would do everything they could to make them comfortable.

As for other storm damage, she said, “I think they had some branches down, but I'm sure they'll know the full extent in the morning. Hopefully we came through fairly unscathed.”

So far as she knew, she said, the college had not yet canceled its plans to hold its convocation on Sunday afternoon.

Although such a storm is not the ideal way to start a semester, Dugan said, “We're not the only ones.”

Dickinson instructor Rich Lewis, who also writes a column for The Sentinel, called in to report that he had been teaching a class at Dickinson when the storm hit.

“It was an amazing experience for kids who showed up on campus a few days ago,” Lewis said. “We held our class in the biology building, and we had no idea when we went outside” how much damage there had been.

That damage also extended through the old Mooreland neighborhood, Lewis said. But he reported that he headed out Walnut Bottom Road and noticed that, oddly enough, the damage seemed to stop near the Thornwald Home.

“There are branches covering Mooreland Avenue right in front of our house,” said Rhonda Irwin, who lives in the street's 600 block. “It was some fierce wind, unbelievable. I was just watching out the widow, and my cowardly dog was hiding behind me.”

The winds were driving, she said, and the rain was going nearly sideways. All the electricity was out, she said, and she was coping by “marching around with candles and stuff like that.”

Although Irwin said she never pays attention to the weather, the storm didn't catch her totally unaware.

“It's not a surprise, with the heat as extreme as it was today,” she said.

Corroborating her opinion was Dave Martin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in State College.

“We basically had a cold front coming in from the central Great Lakes,” Martin said. That collided with the very hot, humid mass here and triggered a series of squall lines, he said.

Martin said winds up to 50 or 60 mph had been reported, along with hail that measured up to three-quarters of an inch. Most of the damage appeared to due to straight-line winds, he said.

There was another band of storms east of State College, Martin said, but around 9 p.m. he didn't expect that those would cause much damage.

“Not a good night,” he said in summation. But the following days should be better, he said, with temperatures staying lower than they were Saturday.