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Jessica Nelms

John Roper surveys damage to his home in Seneca after a large tree was uprooted by high winds Wednesday, Jna. 7, 2009. Roper said the tree fell on the bedroom area of the home while he was in another area. No injuries were reported.

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Andrew Moore

Significant wind damage was done to connective piping and a metal awning at the rear of Oconee Dialysis on South Oak Street in Seneca on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009.

SENECA — Powerful winds swept through Oconee and Pickens counties Wednesday, bowling over trees and causing structural damage throughout the Upstate.

Blair Holloway of the National Weather Service confirmed the Upstate, from Oconee County to the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, saw 50 mph winds at times.

“We’ve had several locations throughout the area that are reporting gusts from 45 to 50 miles per hour,” Holloway said.

Jerry Wayman of the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) said trees falling on power lines caused some traffic light outages, the most prominent one being at the intersection of highways 93 and 123.

“We’re getting numerous reports of trees down, and we’re addressing them as quickly as we can,” Wayman said Wednesday afternoon. “The ground is saturated after all the rain, so we’re having a lot of falling trees.”

Oconee County Emergency Services Director Rodney Burdette said stations across the Golden Corner were responding to multiple calls of trees falling across roads and on top of power lines. Burdette said he counted at least 15 such instances, including three in Westminster, two in Corinth-Shiloh, three in West Union, two in Salem, two in Oakway and several more in the Seneca area.

John Roper’s home at 405 E. Crescent St. in Seneca was hit by an uprooted tree Wednesday afternoon. Roper said the tree fell on the bedroom area of the home while he was in another part of the house. No injuries were reported.

Significant wind damage was done to connective piping and a metal awning at the rear of Oconee Dialysis on South Oak Street in Seneca. Another tree did damage to the exterior of a home in the Bountyland area.

“With the high winds and the soaked ground trees are loose at the roots, and the winds are just pushing them right over,” Burdette said. “We were expecting something like this to happen, but we honestly weren’t expecting so much.”

Wind and falling trees also caused widespread power outages. Terry Ballenger of Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative said as of 4 p.m. Wednesday the company had about 4,400 members without service. A total of 130 separate outages had been recorded throughout the Blue Ridge service area. According to the company, service may not be restored in some areas until this afternoon.

Sandra McGee of Duke Energy reported tens of thousands of outages for Duke customers across the Upstate. Oconee County saw only 134 outages, but Pickens saw nearly 2,000.

“We’re moving crews from outage to outage,” McGee said. “We’re dealing with trees on the lines, but compounding that problem is keeping in mind the safety of the crews doing the work.”

Clemson Police Chief Jimmy Dixon and Public Works Director David Conner both reported fallen trees in the area, resulting in power outages and some traffic light malfunctions.

“We’ve had some to go down,” Conner said. “We probably have four different crews out right now, running spot checks and spot calls of downed trees.”

Conner said areas near Holden Drive and Vicks Drive were particularly hard hit by gusts.