Emergency crews were hard at work across Cherokee County responding to a large number of reports of downed trees and property damage on Thursday.

A tree was across a house at 1449 County Road 251 with live power lines at the scene.

  It appears no one was hurt and the home received no major structural damage.  The roof was reportedly blown off of a structure on County Road 40; also on 40 there was a tree down across a mobile home located across from the Spring Creek Fire Department and another homeowner, at 360 County Road 83 – reported a tree being down at that location – causing damage to their vehicle as well as a gas tank.

There were approximately 5,000 Cherokee Electric Customers affected by power outages.

Cherokee Electric Manager Randall Wilkie said they had a Transmission line from Alabama Power which affected service in the Knighten’s Crossroads area – along with many other locations including 278 toward the Alabama/Georgia line; he added all available personnel worked throughout much of the day and into the night to restore power to those affected areas.

Neighboring Etowah County was hard-hit by the storm as well with approximately 80 trees being toppled by high winds; roughly 13,000 Alabama Power customers lost service during the severe weather event in the county, and approximately 258,000 outages were reported statewide.

There were also four structures damaged as a result; fortunately, however no injuries were reported.

Hokes Bluff, Southside, Gadsden and Rainbow City all reported significant damage.