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SIERRA VISTA — There may not have been a Sierra Vista Holiday Parade on Saturday, but there sure was a show of a different sort.
Mother Nature blew in late Friday night and early Saturday morning and left her mark through a variety of damage, from toppled trees to a trampoline on top of a roof to air conditioners and coolers blowing off roofs to awnings being twisted by the wind to scattered holiday yard decorations.
The wind ripped a portion of the roof off a home in the 4900 block of South Santa Aurelia.
A 35-foot-tall Modesto ash crashed down onto the home of Margaret Griffiths and Frank Gnagni on Paseo las Palmas.
  
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Although she was awoken by the storm in the middle of the night, Griffiths didn’t remember hearing the tree fall. It wasn’t until the morning when she was given the news.
“We’re mourning because it was such a huge and lovely tree,” Griffiths said. The tree was more than 30 years old.
Although some of their apricot trees were crushed from the fall, the house seemed to be free of major damages.
“We were lucky no windows were broken,” she said.
According to the National Weather Service’s weather conditions report from Fort Huachuca’s Libby Army Airfield, wind gusts ranged between 30 and 60 mph between 11 p.m. on Friday and 8 p.m. on Saturday. The Weather Channel reported gusts of about 70 mph in some areas.
A wind speed of 41 mph was measured at 6:56 a.m. Saturday, about the time the decision to postpone the parade was made, the weather service reported. The wind speed ranged from 20 to 45 mph between 9 p.m. on Friday and 8 a.m. on Saturday.
“We were making calls early yesterday morning trying to decide what to do,” said Susan Tegmeyer, president and CEO of the Greater Sierra Vistas Area Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the parade. “In the end we decided to cancel the parade because, with gusts of up to 46 mph, it had become a safety issue. A lot of children participate in the parade and some entrants had already withdrawn the day before because they were concerned about their children’s safety.”
The chamber hopes to hold the parade next Saturday.
As Fry Boulevard had an ordinary amount of traffic on Saturday morning instead of being closed for the parade, many people didn’t have an ordinary look in their yards.
Emergency personnel were busy fielding and responding to calls for a variety of storm-related reasons. The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office responded to 25 calls, between midnight and 2:15 a.m., said Carol Capas, the agency’s spokeswoman
Downed and bent road signs, displaced air conditioning units and yard ornaments that were reduced to debris accounted for many of the calls in the night.
Someone also reported that their mobile carport was ripped off by the winds and landed on a neighbor’s roof, Capas said.
The Sheriff’s Office received another surge of calls later in the morning when residents woke up and discovered the damage that occurred overnight.
Most of the damages occurred in the Sierra Vista area, but there were reports from Willcox, Naco and other areas for downed road signs and debris in roads.
“Our road department has been extra busy,” Capas said.
Three volunteers from the Sheriff’s Assist Team helped in the aftermath by watching over intersections where repairs took place.
No injuries or automobile wrecks were directly attributed to the wind Saturday, Capas said.
The Sierra Vista Fire Department received calls on fallen trees and a power outage, Capt. Thomas Fenn said. The department advised people to contact a tree care service and their home insurance providers for any damages.
In the Fry Fire District, firefighters spent the early morning hours responding to downed power line calls, including one near Nick’s Place on Highway 92, Fire Chief Bill Miller said.
Other damage reported to the Fry Fire District included awnings of homes being damaged by the wind and a tree falling onto a car in the Golden Acres Drive area.
One of the district’s own pieces of equipment, an 80-foot-tall communications tower near the intersection of Hereford Road and Highway 92, was bent almost at its halfway point. Miller said the tower provided a secondary communication channel for the fire district, as well as having Sprint cell phone communication equipment on it.
The fire district’s communications were not impacted by the tower damage, and Miller said a Sprint representative was called to assess that equipment.
A few downed trees didn’t keep customers away from McDonald’s on Fry Boulevard. McDonald’s owner Pat Richards and other employees used a chain saw and hatchet to remove four mesquite trees at the fast-food restaurant’s parking lot.
Fort Huachuca also saw storm damage, which included downed trees snapping power lines, said Lt. Col. Matt Garner, the fort’s public affairs officer. A portion of the Mountain View Golf Course clubhouse’s roof also was damaged.
On Saturday morning, crews were cleaning up debris and restoring power to affected areas on post.
About 50 Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative customers in the area of Nelson and Martin drives in northwest Sierra Vista experienced a hour and a half long power outage starting at 2 a.m. on Saturday, said Jack Blair, the cooperative’s chief member services officer.
The outage was caused when the wind flipped a couple of wires, causing them to touch and causing a breaker to go out, Blair said.
Blair, too, was personally affected by the weather. On Saturday morning, he could not get out his front door because a 5-foot-tall cactus uprooted by the wind leaned against it.
HERALD/REVIEW Managing Editor Keith J. Allen can be reached at 515-4610 or keith.allen@svherald.com. Reporter Laura Ory can be reached at 515-4683 or by e-mail at laura.ory@svherald.com. Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess and Amanda Baillie, communications director for the Greater Sierra Vista Area Chamber of Commerce, contributed to this report.
To rookie wrote on Dec 4, 2007 8:06 PM: