Severe thunderstorms, damaging winds and a tornado threat were some of the weather events residents in the Kansas City area experienced on Saturday night.
Storm damage puts business on hold for local auto body shop
Some businesses, like Importmasters, were also impacted.
Around 10:40 p.m. Saturday, Mike Schowengerdt received a phone call.
"The alarm company called me because the alarm went off when the doors blew in,” said Schowengerdt.
His auto body shop, Importmasters, on Cherry Street, was hit by debris during Saturday night’s storm.
"When I drove in it looked like a war zone or something I wasn't sure at first exactly what had happened,” he said.
But he soon found out, "It picked up the temporary roof off of the temporary roof on the apartment building a block away and just slammed all that stuff into the front of the building."
Schowengerdt spent Saturday night and Sunday morning clearing debris and boarding up his garage.
"The three doors that are now boarded up are the three that we use all the time because they're the three that have the last," he said. "That's kind of knocking us out of doing a whole lot of business for the next few days until we get doors."
After he’s finished with cleanup he has to make some tough phone calls, to let some of his customers know their cars were damaged and that the shop will be temporarily out of commission.
Power outages
Some residents also reported outages across the area.
KCP&L crews from Oklahoma and Colorado assisted local crews with restoring more than 40,000 customers over 12 hours, officials said.
KCP&L reported the peak of customers that were without power was at 93,000. They expect outages into Monday evening.
At its height BPU reported 14,000 people were without power. Officials said crews are working Sunday into Monday, some 36 hours nonstop. Crews from other cities have also assisted.
Westar Energy experienced longer than normal restoration times in Kansas including Atchison and Lawrence. The electric company expects to have all customers restored by 5 p.m. Sunday.
Westar reports 15,000 customers were without power at the peak of the storm.
Independence Power and Light reported 700 customers were without power early Sunday.
What should you do if you power goes out? Here is how to report an outage.
