As a severe windstorm blew through the county Saturday night, Victor McGinnis said the wind at his Chicora home was particularly “wicked.”

“Yesterday, just sitting there watching some of the hockey games, listening to the wind, out of no where I decided to go look at the trees outside,” McGinnis said. “Right when I did, I looked across the road and two fair-sized trees, but thin in size, fell across the road. And then mine fell, and I thought, ‘Holy cow, my big pine tree.’”

McGinnis’ pine tree was a healthy 70 feet tall and at least 50 years old.

The wind, he said, completely uprooted it.

“It just fell shy of the white line on Route 68. Unfortunately, it did bring down the cable wire from the utilities, but it didn’t cause any outages,” McGinnis said.

In the county, more than 9,000 customers were without power after the storm hurled trees into power lines Saturday.

McGinnis was lucky.

“It didn’t cause any damage to anybody or hurt anybody,” he said. “That was the best part.”

Tracy Parker, of Karns City, was not so lucky.

“Well, I had an interesting drive home from Renfrew,” Parker said. “The roads were crazy, and I pulled past my house to find my mother and son looking up, and my green roof was no longer green — it was brown.”

The wind Parker said, had pulled off one side of her green metal roof, revealing the wood beneath.

“And I had large sheets of metal flying around my yard, so my first concern was to grab all that and get it someplace safe so it didn’t cause more damage,” she said. “We’re talking 20-foot long by three foot wide sheets of metal flying through my yard.”

Luckily, she said, no one was harmed, including her free-range turkeys.

“We have free-range turkeys and at one point a piece was flying off and they were running for cover,” Parker said. “And here’s these grown-ups sitting there screaming, ‘Run, Turkey!’ like they knew what we were saying.”

When they got back inside, she said they had no power.

“So we just listened to the wind,” Parker said. “And I have two large barns plus several outbuildings with that same metal on it, so we spent the day praying nothing worse happened.”

Thankfully, she said, nothing did.

“The funny thing is that the roof is now exposed to my attic, and I have cats and they keep crawling up on the roof,” Parker said laughing. “They love it. They love the new turn of events.”

Recovery efforts are still underway after the windstorm left many county businesses and homes without power Saturday.

Two trees blocked the entrances to Butler County Community College Sunday, March 26, afternoon at Old Plank Road and Decatur Drive. At 3 p.m., the college announced that it would be closed Monday, March 27, “due to power outage & storm-related damage.”

Brian White, superintendent of the Butler Area School District, alerted parents that, while schools will be open, buses may be restricted by the clean up efforts and may not be able to reach all stops. He requested parents send a note with their child.

“I will be directing all faculty to be flexible with student homework, test, quizzes and other school work that would be difficult to complete or prepare without power,” White said in the message issued Sunday.

As of 7 p.m. Sunday, 1,623 West Penn Power customers were still without power. Central Electric Cooperative had 519 customers also still without power.

“I’ll just tell you right now, it’s going to be a multi-day restoration,” said Todd Meyers, spokesman for West Penn Power, on Sunday.

While crews are working "around the clock“ to repair the storm’s damage, a release by West Penn Power stated some customers could be without power until early Tuesday.

“We expect to restore service to the majority of customers by 11 p.m. Monday, March 27,” the statement read. “Customers in the hardest hit area of Butler County are expected to have service restored by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28.”

Wind speeds during the storm exceeded over 60 miles per hour, according to Meyers, and the storm was especially damaging after heavy rain last week loosened the soil.

“It’s a large outage situation caused by all that wind yesterday,” Meyers said. “And what that wind does, is it up-roots trees, blows them down into our wires. It can break poles and it tears wire down.”

West Penn Power crews are working 16 hours on and eight hours off each day, according to Meyers, in an effort to restore power in the county.

Customers experiencing outages are encouraged to report them at firstenergycorp.com.

He warned residents, though, to stay at least 30 feet from downed wires.

“They don’t need to be burning or arcing or sparking to be dangerous,” he said. “They can kill you and they can look completely inert but they’re not.”

Debris, he said, should be avoided, as it may hide these live wires.

Meyers said contractors from as far as Philadelphia have been brought in to speed the restoration.

“There’s still going to be a lot of work ahead,” Meyers said.