By BECKY MARTINEZ

and LISA NICELY

crescent@crescent-news.com

Thousands of homes including the entire villages of Holgate and Hamler were still without power today as Toledo Edison crews battled damage from straightline wind and thunderstorms Friday evening.

The prospect for many of these people receiving power again could be as late as Monday.

As of Saturday night, Toledo Edison had approximately 14,000 customers without power throughout its coverage area. Locally, there were approximately 10,587 customers without power and of those 9,000 were in Defiance County. About 587 customers around Wauseon were without power and another 1,000 in the surrounding area.

"It's widespread," said Reggie Strauss, area manager for Toledo Edison, of the outages. "That's the other problem we're having. It would be easier if the area was contained."

At the height of the storm there were 40,000-plus Toledo Edison customers without power. Strauss said crews were immediately dispatched to handle the outages. Assistance has been called from other operating companies as well to assist in the power restoration.

"We are working as safely and diligently as we can to restore power to all our customers," said Strauss. "Because of the extensive amount of damage, we're looking at late (Saturday) afternoon to early Monday before all power is restored."

The entire village of Holgate was without power on Saturday. A representative from Toledo Edison told Mayor Wally Snyder that the power should be back on late today.

Snyder said the village has asked residents to conserve water. Because of the storm, the village is getting water from only one well.

"We were fortunate as far as damage in Holgate that there were only a few downed trees," said Snyder. "The only real concern is being without power for that long a time."

Toledo Edison isn't the only electric company that had crews out working.

"We have been working all night," said Dave Wheeler of American Electric Power. "We have called in crews from Columbus and contractor crews. They will continue to work until we get everybody back in."

Wheeler said there were 938 customers in the region without power. The majority of the outage, 712 customers, were located around Paulding County. AEP expected power to be restored by 10 p.m. Saturday.

Paulding-Putnam Electric had power outages throughout its entire service area on Saturday, according to a representative. Outages were reported in Cloverdale, Oakwood, Grover Hill, Continental, Antwerp, Paulding, Cecil and surrounding areas. There was no estimate on when power would be restored to the areas.

A Tri-County Rural Eletric Cooperative spokesman said that all of its 1,859 customers south of the Maumee River regained their power as of 7:50 p.m. Saturday. He said the loss was due to broken power poles and lines and damage to other lines. These losses were mostly located on Standley Road and in the Weston area. He said customers lost power about 9 p.m. Friday night. Power was also restored in McClure.

He said Toledo Edison brought in a number of crews, some from the Cleveland area, and they were working on the lines.

In addition to the power outages, straight line winds traveling at 60-70 miles per hour caused a variety of structural and tree damage in the area.

"For this time of the year, we can get strong winds, a squall line, it could occur," said Sara Wesser of the National Weather Service. A squall line is when a front line of storms contain strong, gusty winds. "That's what happened."

Now, people are facing problems everywhere.

With the power outage, Dan Pahl of Bowman Road said on Saturday, "I couldn't tell from where I lived why the road was shut off."

He drove his golf cart down the road to see what was going on and saw power lines down. He then went to his son-in-law's home to start their generator.

"We had one at home we had to start to save meat in the refrigerator," Pahl said. "The one neighbor down the road still doesn't have power."

John Bussing went to check on his rental house down the road from his home on Hill Avenue.

"It was a big surprise," he said, reflecting on the tree that crashed on the empty home. There was also a live power line down on the property.

"I've had to shoo the neighbor kids away from it," said Bussing, who was waiting for someone from Toledo Edison to shut power to the line on Saturday afternoon.

Bob Zimmerman of 26435 Standley Road lost a barn. It's believed a power pole fell on his barn and the loose, live wires lit it on fire. According to Firefighter Paul Seibert with the South Richland Fire Department, Zimmerman's barn was completely destroyed.

"The wind was a big problem for us, plus we had to work around live power lines. It took a while to get the fire under control."

Luckily no injuries were reported during the incident.

In Defiance County, authorities with the Defiance Police Department and the Defiance County Sheriff's Office reported limbs on roads, cars and homes. Entire trees were reported down at the Defiance College, Holgate, Ayersville, Washington and Jefferson avenues and Ohio 424 between Domersville and Carpenter roads.

There were also many power lines reported down. Some areas hit were Washington Avenue, Lincoln Drive, Jefferson Avenue, Downs Street, Seneca Street, Ginter Road, Deatrick Street, Grove Street and Bouton Avenue, Fruit Ridge Road, and Flory Road.

The Spruce Street Deli and Brass Room in Defiance, owned by Kim's Katering, lost the rubberized roof to the building when the storm rolled through the east side of the city.

According to employee Ruth Mohr, a rehearsal dinner was underway when the incident occurred. The air conditioning unit on top of the structure also blew off and landed on a guest's vehicle, crushing in the windshield.

Additional catering jobs were scheduled to continue on Saturday though a party at the Brass Room was moved down the street to the AMVETS post.

Tracy Busch, Henry County EMA director said Saturday, "We held up fairly well. We have several structures with damage and downed power lines. We're working on getting power started up.

"Beck Brothers, in Ridgeville off U.S. 6, reported the roof and walls from their farm building torn off. We had a semi blow over and a couple homes in Napoleon reported trees fell and hit rooms," said Busch.

But his biggest concern is the power. "We've had a few people who needed to be transported to the hospital because they're on oxygen. I've already been in contact with the health commissioner, the health department and the sanitary engineer -- we're going over issues concerning food safety so we can get information out to the restaurants and homeowners," said Busch.

In Paulding County, EMA director Randy Shaffer said, "Probably the worst damage was southeast of Antwerp. A large limb on a house caused some structural damage. We've had reports of several smaller limbs, trees down. One large tree in Paulding came down on South Williams Street.

"Over by Oakwood and Roselm area, a couple barns were reported as being heavily damaged. An old shed was blown to the ground," said Shaffer.

Bob Hartman, Fulton County EMA director said, "We're no worse than anywhere else. We had a lot of wind, Damage was contained to trees, power lines and poles. We had very little structural damage and no injuries."

The Putnam County Office of Public Safety also reported downed power lines, uprooted trees and broken branches in "nearly all areas of the county."

There was a large crowd of people attending the Relay for Life of Putnam County who were evacuated from the high school track area into the Ottawa-Glandorf High School for shelter.

Most displays and base tents were destroyed or heavily damaged. The event was canceled for the evening and set to resume Saturday.

Two Continental Fire department firefighters received minor injuries from a large tree limb that fell onto the cab of their fire truck on West Rice Street, in the village, when they were out on a call. Perry Rau and Tom elkins were transported to St. Rita's Medical Center in Lima , where they were treated for minor injuries and released.

Contributing to this story were staff writers Jenny Derringer and Darlene Prince