The “fireworks” started one day early this July in Peekskill when a powerful late afternoon storm ripped through the city on Monday. But Mother Nature showed her true colors are red, white and blue the next morning when the skies cleared to usher in a rousing Fourth of July parade through Peekskill’s downtown streets and another spectacular fireworks show at the Riverfront Green.
At about 5:00 p.m. on Monday a severe thunderstorm swept through Peekskill, moving east at 20 miles per hour. Ping pong ball size hail and 60 miles per hour wind gusts took down numerous tree limbs and power lines. The 500 block of South Street was closed until July 5 to repair the damage there.
City of Peekskill employees from the public works department, Peekskill firefighters and the police department responded to many calls because of the numerous trees and power lines down throughout the city, Peekskill Police Chief Leo Dylewski told the Herald on Thursday.
Once such call came from Chloe Wareham-Gordon who was exiting Route 9 at South Street about 4:52 and noticed that the trees started “swaying like trees in tropical storms.” She became alarmed as she has a Volkswagen Beetle with a cloth convertible top. “The branches were scraping the side of my car and I could see out of the corner of my eye that a tree was falling directly in front of me. I was terrified and pulled over to the side of the road. Then the hail started and my car started getting flooded with water. I called the fire department because I was trapped by trees.” She also noticed that wires were coming down with the trees. Within 15 minutes the fire department arrived and within five minutes they had used a chain saw and an axe to clear a path for her to drive through. Her four-month-old puppy, Pebbles, remained calm in the back seat throughout the ordeal. “She was remarkably chill,” said Wareham-Gordon. “But it was the longest 15 minutes of my life.”
The top of a large tree was sheared off in front of Joanne and Decatur Myers home on Dyckman Street. “Once I saw the hail, I grabbed my dog and went down to the basement,”said Joanne Myers who noted the sound of the hail drowned out the tree limbs coming off. “Then the power went out and I was in the dark in the basement for awhile.” Her car was surrounded by tree limbs but didn’t have a scratch, unlike a car that was parked on the street and was demolished by the tree. That car belonged to someone who was visiting a person on another block said Myers.
Myers was without power for a couple of hours and said it was scary as there were wires draped across her car and the destroyed car. “Con Edison was here pretty quickly,” she added.
For fireworks on Tuesday night, Dylewski estimated the crowds at Riverfront Green ranged up to 10,000 people, spread out over a wide area from the Yacht Club to the south to Peekskill Landing and beyond to the north. Navigating that many people through one entrance and exit point over the railroad tracks presents a challenge in logistics, but the evening went off without any major incidents.
“The parade was fantastic earlier in the day – there were no issues at all and that worked out extremely well,” Chief Dylewski said.
“We were very happy with how the fireworks were handled. It can be very difficult when you have that amount of people being funneled one way in and one way out. I’m extremely proud of the way the men and women of the City of Peekskill Police Department and everyone we work with handled the events. I couldn’t be more proud of their work,” the chief said.
This year’s Fourth of July parade, sponsored by the Peekskill Volunteer Firefighters Association, was dedicated to the memory of former parade chairman Jim Seymour, 3rd, who died on June 7 after a battle with cancer.
