Record-Courier staff report
Record-Courier photographer Timothy St. Hilaire was one of dozens of Portage County drivers who had a bad start for the new year after crashing their vehicles in the snow and ice.
St. Hilaire's Jeep slid on a patch of ice on S.R. 44 in Shalerville, causing it to roll into a ditch where it landed on the driver's side.
"After passing a couple cars in ditches, I put the Jeep in four-wheel drive," he said. "But four-wheel drive doesn't seem to help driving on black ice, as I soon discovered. It's just four wheels spinning. It also didn't matter that I was well under the 55 mph speed limit for S.R. 44. The Jeep fishtailed. I managed to turn into the slide to arrest the spin, but the back wheel hit gravel, sending the car into a rollover."
He said the next thing he remembers is a man stopping to see if he was OK.
"He cleared away the shattered glass from the dirt and snow inches from my face, so after I unbuckled my seatbelt, I could slide down into the ditch," he said. "There were about four or five people there, pulling me from the car, checking for gasoline leaks, calling 911. They even pulled my camera bag from the back. They gave me one of the mats from inside the car so I could sit on that instead of the cold and wet earth waiting for the EMTs."
He was taken by ambulance to Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, where he was treated and released.
St. Hilaire said he is very grateful that so many people stopped to help.
"I got the name of one of the folks that helped me but I didn't have a pen handy. I don't know who they were, only that they were there when somebody needed them. The Mantua-Shalersville EMTs were great. Everyone at Robinson was professional and quick, even with the rush of similar accidents all over the county," he said. "I was pretty proud to live in Portage County today."
The Hiram Post of the Ohio Highway Patrol reported 11 crashes because of the weather, and the patrol's Ravenna post reported 13 crashes as of Tuesday afternoon, with officers still responding to or en route to other collisions.
Several were attributed to motorists driving too fast for conditions, according to a dispatcher for the Hiram post.
The Charlestown Fire Department also responded to a crash at 1 p.m. Monday on Newton Falls Road, according to a report from the fire department. No one was injured.
The city of Ravenna has issued a snow parking ban on all residential streets effective until noon Thursday. Also, there is a parking ban in the city's central business district from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. today and Thursday morning.
The National Weather Service has a winter storm warning in effect until 7 tonight for an eight-county area, including Portage County. One to three inches of snow was expected overnight, with an additional inch during the day today.
The storm cut power Tuesday to 10,000 northeast Ohio customers as it blew across Lake Erie, a utility spokesman said.
Outages from power lines pulled down by winds and falling tree limbs were mainly in areas of east of Cleveland, though there were some problems within the city, said Chris Eck, a spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp.
The company called in extra crews to help restore power, but they were having difficulty keeping up with the storm, he said.
"As they're getting lights on, lights are going off. They're just fighting it as it happens," Eck said.
A 51 mph gust was recorded mid-morning Tuesday at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, said weather service forecaster Martin Thompson.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.