ST. CLAIRSVILLE — After a brief but severe storm ripped through the Ohio Valley Tuesday afternoon, there were trees down “all over” Eastern Ohio and the Northern Panhandle, and The Highlands complex was entirely without power.

The same was true at the Ohio Valley Plaza in St. Clairsville for much of the evening Tuesday, but power had been restored there by around 8 p.m.

In Neffs, what initially was reported as a tree on a house and a structure fire turned out to be a tree on power lines that were arcing.

In Belmont County, damage to buildings was reported in several locations, including in Morristown where a roof was torn from a structure. In addition to temporarily blocking roads such as Ohio 9 and Ohio 147, fallen trees and limbs also brought down power lines, resulting in numerous outages. As of 8:30 p.m., AEP Ohio reported 2,254 Belmont County customers were without power.

In Harrison County, more than 5,000 AEP customers were without electricty Tuesday evening, with more than 18,000 AEP outages reported in Jefferson County and 41 in Monroe County.

South Central Power Co.’s online outage map indicated 3,125 of its Eastern Ohio customers remained without service.

Across the Ohio River, multiple roads were blocked due to trees and power lines that were downed in the heavy storms, according to Ohio County Emergency Management Director Lou Vargo.

Emergency response officials have been working to respond to calls and notify AEP of power outages. According to the AEP website, several thousand in Ohio County appear to be without power.

Vargo said there was one call of a tree falling on a house, which takes precedence over clearing roads or other obstacles.