Storms featuring straight-line winds and at least one confirmed tornado swept through Allen, Simpson and Warren counties Friday night. Winds resulted in widespread damage to buildings and trees. One death – in Allen County – has been confirmed, but no injuries have been reported in any of the three counties.

Allen County Coroner Darren Davis told the Daily News that Michael Birge, a 38-year-old man from Scottsville, died due to injuries he sustained after a tree fell into the roadway at 678 Washington School Road in Scottsville on Friday night and crushed the pickup truck he was driving.

Davis said the accident occurred “during the peak of the storm.” Birge was dead at the scene when the Allen County Sheriff’s Office responded to the call, and the man was officially pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m., Davis said.

Davis confirmed there were no other deaths or injuries related to the storms in Allen County.

Gary Petty, the Allen County emergency management director, said Saturday his area had “significant straight-line wind damage.” The National Weather Service was surveying the damage to assess whether the area was hit by an EF-0 tornado or just straight-line winds, but Petty had no confirmation.

“We had over 4,000 customers last night through most all of the evening and morning hours that had no electricity due to the trees falling on the power lines,” Petty said. “Just too dangerous of a situation last night for the Tri-County Electric Membership Cooperative to get in there and clean those out.”

Petty said many repairs had to be postponed until Saturday, and about 1,900 customers were still without power as of noon. Local and state agencies have pitched in to help officials clean up roads, restore power and deliver emergency generators to those with “life safety” equipment.

Several houses and trailers were damaged by falling trees, and Petty said homeowners are working to clean up their properties and return to a sense of normalcy while National Weather Service evaluators survey the damage.

“If some trees that were weak or old and damaged were close to homes, yes, there was a good possibility and opportunity that some of the homes were – roof damage and that type thing,” Petty said. “It’s just a mess.”

Robert Palmer, Simpson County’s emergency management director, said the NWS was still gathering information, but its preliminary findings stated an area in the “northeast quadrant” of Simpson County was hit by “about a half-mile long” EF-1 tornado that featured “winds about 90 miles an hour.”

Palmer said most of the damage was contained to the northeastern area, which housed the 70 or 80 mph winds the “tornado spun out of.”

A few houses were severely damaged – including a residence in Huntington Park that had a 50- or 60-foot hardwood tree fall on it – but Palmer said most of the county “escaped” with what he called “superficial” damage.

“Siding, gutter issues, shingle problems,” Palmer said. “Quite a few barns and outbuildings had major damage to total destruction on some of them, but fortunately we’ve got zero injuries that we know of. Pretty low impact on housing – just a big mess with a bunch of tree limbs to clean up.”

Ryan Sharp, a forecaster with the NWS office in Louisville, said storms “all over south central Kentucky” created a lot of damage reports, but the office has only two damage reports documented in its system for Warren County as a result of the storms: a tree reported down off Old Union Church Road near Plano and another tree down near Alvaton.

The Warren County Mesonet site reported a peak wind gust of 45 mph Friday, which does not meet the standard requirement for “severe” straight-line winds, Sharp said. There were a lot of power outages Friday night in Warren County, which Sharp said is an indicator of “at least some wind damage” beyond the office’s two reports.

According to a news release, about 6,500 Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. members in Warren and Simpson counties were without power during the peak of Friday’s thunderstorms and heavy rain.

“Strong winds from the storm led to multiple downed lines and broken poles,” the release stated. “Crews worked through the night and were able to restore most outages. Warren RECC received additional assistance overnight from Bowling Green Municipal Utilities as well as contractor Pike Electric.”

Kim Phelps, senior director of communication and public relations with Warren RECC, said Saturday that service had been restored for almost all customers.

“We are down to under 100 members out … around 85 now,” Phelps said at 2:20 p.m. Saturday.