Cuyahoga County takes a beating during Tuesday night’s severe weather

CUYAHOGA COUNTY, Ohio — Tuesday night’s storm ravaged various parts of Cuyahoga County, including Shaker Heights, Cleveland and North Olmsted.

Tornado Warning issued for 3 Northeast Ohio counties

During our travels throughout the county, we saw a massive tree uprooted out of a field near Woodbury Elementary.

The tree stood inches from South Woodland Road and luckily snapped in the direction of the field rather than the residential homes on the other side.

Over in Cleveland on West 54th Street and Courtland Avenue, police blocked off a section of that intersection due to a downed tree that fell near a playground.

There was also a telephone pole that snapped and was hanging over the top of the road.

In North Olmsted on Birch Circle, there were several downed trees in front yards.

“Oh, it was a mess the second, I mean, coming down and seeing those four trees lying up. There’s three in the front here just lying on their side all over the driveway, and all the neighbors outside, wondering what to do, you know, where to start,” Taylor Wright told me.

Wright wasn’t home at the time of the storm. Neither was his partner, Candace Kepler.

Kepler said she was down the street at Target when the store started making announcements to take shelter.

“They made an announcement saying that everybody needed to be escorted to the tornado hall, and they made us all just leave our shopping carts and everything. We all went to the back of the store and huddled in this little metal hall in the back of Target,” Kepler said.

For 35 minutes, Kepler said she was stuck inside the store, worrying about her teenage daughter who was home alone.

“She was pretty scared because she saw the trees come down,” Kepler said. “I wanted to leave, but they wouldn’t let me leave, so I just kept her on FaceTime and tried to see if our neighbors… they came over and grabbed her, so that was good. Just keeping her safe was really just a priority.”

Luckily, their daughter is safe and sound, and so are they.

“Had you seen anything like it before?” I asked Wright.

He said, “Not this bad, especially not around here. This was the worst I’ve seen it over here with trees for sure.”

As of 8:30 p.m., Kepler and Wright were without power.

They were anticipating that it would come back on by 9:30 p.m.

Meanwhile, neighbors are already acting fast to chop the downed trees into pieces.

“They were in the neighbor’s driveway, so I grabbed my chainsaw, and then Sam, our neighbor, his kid came over with one, and we just got them all picked up, chopped them all up, and put them all in the tree lawn,” Wright said.

Stick with News 5 as we continue to monitor the latest on storm damage.