{"id":527743,"date":"2026-03-16T23:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/527743\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T23:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:56:11","slug":"storms-knock-down-power-poles-close-road-near-martinsville-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/527743\/","title":{"rendered":"Storms knock down power poles, close road near Martinsville High School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">ROANOKE, VA. \u2013 Heavy rain, high winds and even tornado warnings moved through Southwest Virginia today, impacting Martinsville and surrounding communities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">A road near Martinsville High School was closed as crews worked to repair damage. <\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">\u201cThat occurred around 11 o\u2019clock today when those lines went down and that came in with that first wave of high winds and rain,\u201d said Martinsville\u2019s Director of Communication, Kendall Davis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">The outage affected three businesses, including Martinsville High School, which was already closed for the day. <\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">Martinsville Director of Communications Kendall Davis said crews stayed ready ahead of the storms and urged people to prepare for scattered outages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">\u201cThe number one piece of advice is to continue to monitor the situation and take these situations very, very seriously,\u201d Davis said. \u201cYou want to make sure that you stay proactive, listen out for these warnings and be prepared because you never know when the power outage could hit [or] how long you can be without power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">Davis said no shelters were open, but residents who need a place to go can always go to the public library. <\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__Box-sc-1fnzlkn-0 dist__TextBase-sc-1fnzlkn-3 bYFsJw cuqaEv article-text\">Davis also said five power poles were taken down today.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 by WSLS 10 &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROANOKE, VA. \u2013 Heavy rain, high winds and even tornado warnings moved through Southwest Virginia today, impacting Martinsville&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,13917,3,24338,2785,204442,452,453,96653,5148,2986],"class_list":["post-527743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-martinsville","tag-news","tag-rain","tag-safety","tag-southwest-virginia","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-tornado","tag-virginia","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}