Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 8

A8 THE HARTFORD COURANT; W.dn.idoy, July 12, 1989 i a i 'IK '-ill in '1 1 "4 -) 4, v-iii of Michael McAndrews The Hartford Courant Michael McAndrews The Hartford Courant Dan Rogers, 16, chops away a limb from a tree that crushed a parked car on Hillside Ron Rivard, an employee with the Waterbury Park Department tree warden, takes a break on the curb along Clinton Street Tuesday. After working a full shift Monday, Rivard Avenue in Waterbury Tuesday. He lives in the neighborhood. City workers, volunteers and was called back to work an hour after he got home. residents faced the massive task of clearing hundreds of the fallen trees.

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Ct 1 sSB I i I I I "i 4 Governor declares emergency Continued from Page 1 Not anymore." Everywhere, the capricious signature of the tornadoes was evident. At the Hamden Industrial Park, a corrugated-steel warehouse was reduced to rubble, while a second warehouse a few hundred feet away appeared untouched. In other places, houses on one side of a street were wrecked, while those on the other side suffered little or no damage. The storm cut an irregular swath through thick Litchfield forests, flattening rows of trees but leaving others undisturbed. From the window of a plane flying above Bantam, it looked as if someone had stomped a path through the forest.

Mel Goldstein, director of the Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University, said the National Weather Service had concluded after inspections that tornadoes touched down in Bantam, Hamden and Waterbury Monday night. "At least three and probably a number of small ones" moved through the region in the thunderstorm "cell," Goldstein said. A clash between a cold front from the St. Lawrence Valley and warm air over Connecticut generated the storm about 4 p.m. There were wind gusts of 70 to 81 mph reported in Litchfield and New Haven counties, and the National Weather Service said that 4.4 inches of rain fell in Oxford in half an hour.

Several areas reported hail the size of golf balls. After touring the damaged areas by helicopter and car Tuesday morning and afternoon, O'Neill announced at a briefing that he was declaring a state of civil-preparedness emergency and seeking federal disaster aid. A formal declaration of disaster areas would not be made until damage assessments are complete, O'Neill said. By late Tuesday, O'Neill and other officials said the storm's toll included: Two people killed and 250 injured. Twelve-year-old Jennifer Bike of Stratford was killed when a tree fell on a tent she was sharing with two other campers in the Black Rock State Park in Watertown.

An-gelo Antico, 69, of Watertown, col-' lapsed at his home shortly after the storm, and died of cardiac arrest. Seven people trapped overnight in three damaged homes in Hamden. State police responding to calls from concerned friends or family released them between 10 a.m. and noon Tuesday. "The people were not pinned under rubble.

They were trapped within the houses," blocked by debris or. trapped by doors jammed shut, said Lester J. Forst, the state police commander and commissioner of Public Safety. Electric power for 92,500 Northeast Utilities and United Illuminating customers was lost. About 7,000 customers, most in a 6-to 10-block area of Hamden, could be without electricity until Saturday.

Officials had no estimates of the number of homes damaged or destroyed, nor would they estimate the dollar amount of damage. Emergency shelters for the homeless were opened in Hamden and Waterbury. i Representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency will begin their damage assessment Thursday morning, assisted by the state Department of Economic Development, O'Neill said. "The most severe damage I saw was definitely in the southern area of Hamden itself," O'Neill said. "The area was truly devastated.

Many, many homes destroyed. Flattened. Industrial complexes knocked out." E. Jon Majkowski, the vice president for public affairs of United Illuminating, said the storm in many ways was worse than Hurricane Gloria, which left 200,000 customers without power in 1985. He said the storm destroyed the electrical system in six to 10 blocks of southern Hamden, along Dixwell Avenue.

The utility will have to build a new system, he said. With Hurricane Gloria, the damage was widespread, but not as severe, he said. He said 5,200 customers in southern Hamden could be without electricity until Friday or Saturday. Another 5,300 customers without power in the Fairhaven section of New Haven should get service back today and Thursday, he said. Another 1,000 scattered UI customers were without power in Wood-bridge and other suburbs.

Service will be restored by the end of the week, he said. Bernard M. Fox, the president of Northeast Utilities, said he saw poles snapped in half by flying tree limbs in areas where there were no trees. "I had never seen that before," said Fox, a utility executive for 25 years. Meanwhile, Republican legislative leaders urged O'Neill to expand a special legislative session scheduled for Monday to provide for emergency disaster relief.

The session was called by O'Neill only to consider three vetoed bills. But the governor said the request to expand the session was premature. He said $4 million already is available in a state disaster fundi created in 1987. In. iiiiii.Hiiif Geoffrey A.

Hecht stands outside his Blake Circle home in Hamden Tuesday after surveying the damage. He and his family lived in the new home for only nine months. ru tu. aV ''M'v' 1 Brad Cllft The Hartford Courant A 1 Margot DeMaio, above, carries her cat "Baby" away from her flattened house in Hamden Tuesday morning. DeMaio, her daughters and a neighbor worked to free several cats and dogs trapped in the house, but they were ordered away by police because of potentially explosive gases.

Karen Roberts, right, faces the destruction of her trailer and three cars in the Bantam borough of Litchfield. IS-' I 1 Brad Gift The Hartford Courant Paulifieulet, who barely made it out of his Hamden house alive after a tornado stock Monday, hands neighbor Gail Smith her vacuum) leaner. Paul's brother, Lucien, hels him snana Sureck The Hartford Courant tort through belongings in Smith's New hall Street home..