By Kristyne E. Demske, Cortney Casey and April Lehmbeck
C & G Staff Writers

MACOMB COUNTY — Thousands were without power and traffic was snared by falling debris after a storm ripped through the metro Detroit area June 25. Macomb County, specifically, seemed to be especially hard hit.

“We lost a lot of trees, a lot of power outages … power lines down,” said Detective Sgt. David Faber of the Utica Police Department.

He said there were a few fires in the city caused by downed power lines, including one that sparked on a garage and spread to the neighboring house.

“Traffic was a mess for a long time last night,” Faber said June 26, adding that parts of the city were still without power.

As a result of the storms and power outages, Roseville City Hall had to shut down shop June 26, but they were able to get the word out to residents thanks to a new tool they’re utilizing — the social networking Web site Twitter.

It was the first breaking news announcement that the city could toss up on its Twitter account after they just recently announced plans to start “tweeting.”

In Shelby Township, Police Chief Robert Leman said the township experienced damage of its own.

As of the morning of June 26, he said 5,000 to 10,000 electric customers throughout Shelby were without power and couldn’t expect to get it back before late in the night or early the morning of June 27.

“Basically, a lot of downed wires,” he said. “We had, on Patterson, a tree fall on a house, go through a roof.”

He said that incident, near the area of 21 Mile and Schoenherr roads, was one of the most severe, but they did not experience any fires in the township, although there were many trees scattered across roadways.

In addition, several areas of the township had substantial flooding, including spots of Van Dyke Avenue, that Leman said had up to 2 feet of water over the road.

“It was busy,” he said. “Our dispatch really did a great job. They handled hundreds of overflow 911 calls from Sterling Heights.”

In Sterling Heights, residents living between M-59 and Clinton River Road were likely experiencing déjà vu. Hardest hit by a massive summer storm last June, the same area was ravaged once again, sustaining the most damage in the city this time around as well, said Department of Public Works Director Sal Conigliaro.

“It was almost exactly a year ago … that the storm came through,” he said. “We have a lot of people out there just surprised that almost the exact same scenario happened back to back.”

Conigliaro said the city had been receiving reports of downed trees and power lines in the wake of the June 25 storm and had dispatched DPW crews to assist in the cleanup.

“We have all hands on deck,” he said.

Residents are encouraged to gather any fallen branches in their yards as soon as possible and bundle them for curbside pick-up. Conigliaro said crews hope to have all of the debris retrieved within the next few days.

“We’ll be busy for the next week cleaning up after the storm,” he said.

As of late morning June 26, power remained out in portions of the city’s north side, and Conigliaro said he’d heard that it would probably be restored by late June 26 or early June 27.

For more information on branch pickup or chipping in Sterling Heights, call the DPW at (586) 446-2440.