Hi, Cleveland resident here, and I've had no power since Tuesday.
We recently hosted Summerslam on Saturday, and it was great! Personnally I think the stage setup was a bit lackluster, and I was hoping for a Mick Foley segment in the boiler room of Browns stadium, as a callback to Summerslam 96, but otherwise I had fun. So did thousands of people. Then Sunday everybody flew home. Locals went home Saturday night.
Then Tuesday came......
Tuesday was bad. Real bad. At 3:45pm I stepped out of my apartmemt on my way to work, took 3 steps, and heard the tornado siren. It was clearly going to rain soon. Grey skies and all, but a tornado??? In Cleveland????
So I checked my phone's weather app, and saw 10 different tornado warnings. Not tornado watch, tornado WARNINGS.
I walked right back inside. Called off work, and went back in my apartment. Turned on the TV to find out the extent of the damage. As soon as I hit the power button on my tv, the tv came on, for literally milliseconds, and then ALL power went off.
I had no cell service, no power, and no way to find out whats going on.
As it turns out, 4 different F1 tornados ripped northern ohio apart. 460,000 people without power instantly. Centuries old trees uprooted. Power lines everywhere downed. Vehicles thrown across the road. Chaos everywhere.
Electric crews came in from as far away as south carolina to help. But also PA, NY, WV, MI, IL, IN, all just to clear things up.
And now that calm has finally come for me personally, I can't help but think about Saturday......what if on the day of Summerslam, all this chaos ensued then????
It was already a disaster as it was. But to have close to 60k people all in one stadium as it happened??? It very well could have cancelled summerslam, AND been the cause of a lot of death.
It could have very easily gone from disaster to national tragedy.