Liberty assessing damage after powerful storms Tuesday night

LIBERTY, Mo. — Clay County’s largest city has a mess to clean up.

Trees are down across Liberty after Tuesday evening’s weather event delivered powerful winds.

The FOX4 Weather Team believes this may have been a microburst with winds likely reaching 80 miles per hour . Dozens of trees fell, and homes were in danger amid the straight-line winds.

Dana Combs and her family had gone out to dinner on Tuesday evening.

Combs said a neighbor called around 6:30 p.m. with news that their home, which sits in Liberty’s Dougherty Historic District, had a large oak tree leaning on it. Neighbors said the home’s history dates back to the 1880s. It now shows visible signs of wear and tear from the storm’s effects.

“Nobody was home. That’s a good thing. It could have squished the middle of my house, and it didn’t and that’s a good thing. It squished the corner, so I’m counting my blessings,” Combs said on Wednesday.

On the other side of Liberty’s downtown square, an enormous spruce tree fell from Judy Minor’s yard near Kansas and Liberty streets. When it toppled, it narrowly missed the house across the street. When the tree fell, the giant roots tore up her porch and her concrete patio. A gas line was exposed, too.

A spokesperson for Spire tells FOX4 this is the only outage the company knows of in Liberty.

“It’s like you just go numb. You do what you have to do. We were all OK. We knew we were OK. Our neighbors were OK,” Minor said.

Two doors down from Minor’s yard, Charles Gilker, a 90-year-old retired college professor said the wind blew so hard, he could barely see. The two hackberry trees that sit in his front yard are split after high winds ripped large limbs from both of them.

A Liberty Public Works crew went to work clearing the street on Wednesday afternoon.

“They were bending in every direction, it seemed to me. I was afraid it would fall on the house, but fortunately, it fell in the street,” Gilker said.

A spokesperson for the City of Liberty said many fallen tees are cleared from power Iines by utility companies, and city crews will clear trees from streets, but it’s the homeowner’s responsibility to manage removal.

Evergy crews could be seen restoring power service as needed. As of late Wednesday afternoon, Evergy’s outage map showed fewer than 500 customers in Liberty without service, which is down significantly from Tuesday night’s numbers.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports.