Summit County is one of eight counties included in a state of emergency Gov. Mike DeWine declared Saturday after torrential rains, flash floods and tornadoes hit the area. Cuyahoga, Portage, Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Trumbull are the other counties covered.

In Akron, the Merriman Valley business district appeared to be the hardest hit area after between 3.5 and 5 inches of rain fell in a few hours when remnants of Hurricane Debby stalled over the area Thursday.

Four tornadoes on Aug. 6 left paths of damage through Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake and Lorain counties. The severe weather left thousands of Cleveland-area residents and businesses without power – many outages continued into the weekend, with nearly 30,000 FirstEnergy customers still without power early Sunday afternoon.

Green triangles mark damage points along the paths of four confirmed tornadoes Tuesday, Aug. 6 in Northeast Ohio.
Green triangles mark damage points along the paths of four confirmed tornadoes last week in Northeast Ohio, including one that moved southeast from Richfield into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park between Peninsula and Boston Township. (Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Damage Assessment Toolkit web page)

“This declaration of a state of emergency will give the state the ability to give these communities expedited assistance,” DeWine said in a news release. He said the state is “in this for the duration and will continue to help local communities in Northeast Ohio as they recover from the damage left by the storm.” 

DeWine also directed Ohio Emergency Management Director Sima Merick to ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to come to the area and conduct a damage assessment.

Mobile oxygen generators were sent by the Ohio Department of Health to Cuyahoga County, where electrical outages led to a critical shortage. 

Fewer than 20 residents were without power in Akron as of 3 p.m. Sunday.
Fewer than 20 residents were without power in Akron as of 3 p.m. Sunday, but FirstEnergy’s outage map still shows widespread problems across Northeast Ohio and extending east toward Pennsylvania, with more than 25,000 residents still without power after Tuesday’s storms. (Source: FirstEnergy)

The release also stated that the Ohio Emergency Management Agency is working with the eight county emergency management agencies to “monitor developments and offer assistance.” The county EMAs will work with local communities and conduct public damage assessments for potential reimbursement. 

Summit County residents are encouraged to self-report if they experienced damage from the Aug. 8 flash flooding in the Akron area. The deadline is Wednesday, Aug. 14.

Verified damage reports will be sent to the Ohio EMA to determine if any supplemental financial assistance will be provided to communities and/or residents.

The county EMAs will then submit their requests for assistance to the Ohio EMA to determine whether state and federal damage thresholds are met for reimbursement.  

Fred Cooper, a train conductor with the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, breaks up a clump of sticks on the track near the Merriman Road crossing.
Fred Cooper, a train conductor with the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, breaks up a clump of sticks on the track near the Merriman Road crossing in the Cuyahoga Valley. Cooper and his colleagues walked the track Friday morning to remove debris, including a downed tree, after a torrential rainfall Thursday night caused flash flooding in the area. (Susan Zake / Signal Akron)

Rep. Emilia Sykes, along with representatives Shontel Brown (OH-11), Dave Joyce (OH-14), and Max Miller (OH-7), sent DeWine a letter Friday urging him to declare a state of emergency in nine counties. The end result did not quite match up, as Wayne, Holmes and Medina were left out of the governor’s declaration. Trumbull and Portage counties were not included in the request from the legislators but were included in the state of emergency declaration.  

The letter also requested that DeWine call in the FEMA Damage Assessment Teams to survey the affected areas. 

“Northeast Ohio has been critically hit with severe weather not once, but twice in just three days,” Sykes said in a press release. “So many Northeast Ohioans are hurting from this natural disaster, and as their representatives, we must do everything we can to assist.”

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Tornado confirmed in Cuyahoga Valley National Park

In Summit County, an EF1 tornado with winds of 104 miles per hour touched down just before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday near a commercial warehouse along Columbia Road in Richfield, taking off the east end of the roof and blowing down 11 empty semi-truck trailers nearby, according to the National Weather Service.

The twister moved southeast for about four miles into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where it snapped and downed trees as it crossed Interstate 80 and the Towpath Trail.

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Editor-in-Chief (she/her)
Zake has deep roots in Northeast Ohio journalism. She was the managing editor for multimedia and special projects at the Akron Beacon Journal, where she began work as a staff photographer in 1986. Over a 20-year career, Zake worked in a variety of roles across departments that all help inform her current role as Signal Akron's editor in chief. Most recently, she was a journalism professor and student media adviser at Kent State University, where she worked with the next generation of journalists to understand public policy, environmental reporting, data and solutions reporting. Among her accomplishments was the launch of the Kent State NewsLab, an experiential and collaborative news commons that connects student reporters with outside professional partners.