ASHMORE — Strong winds from a storm damaged several buildings at a John Deere dealership in Ashmore late Tuesday night.
Nobody was reported hurt.
Josh Long, store manager for the John Deere facility, said the storm blew through town between 10:30 and 11 p.m. Tuesday.
"At about 12:30 a.m. some firemen called me, telling me I needed to come out to the site," said Long, who lives just south of town. "When I got here, I saw that our showroom roof was missing and our sprayer shop had a hole in the wall."
Long said the winds blew one of the large shop doors onto a few pieces of equipment.
"It pressurized the building," he said. "I found the shop wall laying on the parking lot," he said.
Long said winds blew the showroom roof into the sprayer shop, putting a big hole in that roof.
"That roof, in turn, hit a storage shed next to it," Long said. "It was a domino effect."
While a couple of lawn mowers were damaged, Long said, there appeared to be little damage to other equipment.
Long said he spent most of Wednesday working with contractors to get the holes covered before expected cold weather reached the area.
"We're trying to get things buttoned up," he said.
Long said it was too soon to determine a dollar amount to the damage.
He said he was using generators since the power still had not returned by early Wednesday evening.
He said telephone calls to the Ashmore facility are being temporarily forwarded to the company's Urbana facility.
Long said he anticipated reopening for business as soon as electricity is restored.
"We are trying to keep business as usual as much as we can with the situation we have," he said.
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