PROVO, Utah — The 12-minute supercell storm that hit Provo Tuesday caused roughly $13 million damage, or as Mayor Lewis Billings put it, "more than a million dollars a minute."
The city's preliminary estimate Wednesday was considered conservative, and Billings expects it to increase as further evaluation is carried out.
The city filed a disaster declaration with Utah County, which filed its own declaration with the state,
The damage included $1.75 million to public property at the Provo Airport, $1.3 million to the power grid, $1.2 million to trees and facilities at public parks and $375,000 to other facilities.
Estimates of private damage ranged from $6 million to $11 million.
About 300 customers still were without power Wednesday evening, down from 8,500 immediately after the storm, accompanied by 80 mph winds, blew through.
Nineteen work crews from Provo, several neighboring cities and Rocky Mountain Power worked continuously to remove and replace the 45 damaged power poles. Almost half had been replaced by Wednesday.
Billings said the crews included retired workers and those pulled in early from vacations, as well as public works employees able to dig holes and help in other ways.
"We're going to do in two days what normally would take weeks and weeks to accomplish," he said.
Qwest spokesman Bob Gravely said about 50 customers, most of whom live in Springville, were disconnected when power poles that also had telephone lines came down.
He expected service to be restored by late Thursday.
About 100 iProvo customers reported having problems with their Internet connection, said Mary DeLaMare-Schaefer, the marketing and customer relations manager for Provo city energy.
No problems were reported to Questar Gas.
At the airport, nine aircraft and 13 buildings sustained significant damage.
The storm moved through so quickly that just a few minutes after it tore up the airport, a jet landed without any difficulty.
Night operations were shut down Tuesday night because the airport could not get enough generators, but that has been solved and all operations should be back to normal, airport manager Steve Gleason said.
Mario Markides, the associate chairman of the aviation science department at Utah Valley State College, said the program lost two airplanes when the wind broke the tie-downs and flipped them over, and had some structural damage to the building. Classes may be moved to the main campus in Orem until electricity comes back on, but flying was expected to resume Thursday.
Three-fourths of the program's planes had been inspected and were damage-free, he said.
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Information from: The Daily Herald, www.heraldextra.com