Intense weather leaves trail of damage across Southern New England

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — Storms across Rhode Island and Massachusetts on Wednesday led to power outages, flooding, and widespread damage confirmed in Foster, Glocester, Lincoln, and North Attleborough.

In Foster, high wind speeds knocked down trees and shut off power for homes and community members.

“Power is out on this road, I think it’s down on the connection down by East Killingly Road. There’s more trees down, this is about down the line to Connecticut,” Gordon Rogers, the Foster highway director, told ABC 6 News.

“And then, when Rhode Island Energy showed up, they actually had to divert because apparently there was some more trees down on the Scituate line on 101, so they diverted over there right now, and we’re just going to kick around here until they come back to open this road up,” Rogers added.

Damage was also reported in Lincoln, but not all of it was tornado warning-related.

A possible microburst knocked Lincoln High School’s football field press box off its normal spot and into the bleachers.

“The important thing is make sure nobody goes over there. We’ll get some engineers here, some of the appropriate people to take a look and make sure it’s secure. Then, we’ll start rebuilding,” Philip Gould, the Lincoln Town Administrator, said.

Rhode Island was already preparing for an emergency this weekend, with Hurricane Lee expected to impact the state in the next few days.

Following Wednesday’s weather events, Gov. Dan McKee told ABC 6 that they’ll be trying to evaluate the scope of all of the damage in the coming days.

“Evaluating what happens is really important, so we regroup after every one of these storms to do an evaluation of how it was handled and where are the people impacted. So, all of that information is very important,” McKee said.

“The business community, it’s very important that we know how they’re impacted as well so we can get the SBA involved, if necessary, we can get our commerce involved and try to do a quick recovery,” McKee continued.

Cleanup efforts are expected to continue into Thursday.