PEORIA, AZ — Storms wreaked havoc in the West Valley Thursday, snapping trees and leaving thousands without power.
Ring camera given to us by a viewer captures the heavy rain brought by the monsoon storm that rolled through the area Thursday night. You can hear the hail-like rain hitting the camera in force.
“It’s crazy,” said Rafaat Ahmad, a resident who says he lives close to where some of the many power poles and power lines came crashing down.
Ahmad says he’s never seen a storm quite like this one.
“Rain and light coming from the sky. The trees [were] flying. Everybody’s scared.”
Uprooted trees, toppled fences, and mangled stoplights lined the streets.
Exclusive video given to ABC15 by the Busane family shows the moment a power pole snapped and fell to the ground.
“Oh my god,” a woman in the video can be heard saying as the pole fell.
“We can’t move or we’ll get shocked!” a man said, following repeated flashes coming from the downed pole.
APS crews on site tell us this is just one 23 power poles that were destroyed in the storm, and left thousands of utility customers without power.
“So we’re going to be in our house, for a couple of days, just trying to survive, you know?” said high schooler Elias Summers.
“No AC?” ABC15’s Luzdelia Caballero asked.
“No AC,” he responded.
Summers is a student at Peoria High school, one of several schools within the Peoria Unified School District forced to cancel class due to the outage.
The schools impacted include Peoria High School, Peoria Flex Academy, and the MET Professional Academy. Peoria Flex Academy and the MET Professional Academy are on the campus of Peoria High School. Alta Loma, Cheyenne and Peoria Elementary are also canceled Friday.
“I can’t even charge my tablet that I need for school so…they could send me work over online, but I can’t even do it because my power is off,” Summers told ABC15.
Summers says APS told his family the power could be on in a couple of hours or…
“Now they’re saying it might be a couple of days. We got our neighbors going to hotels,” he added.
As crews work to restore power, the Camarillo family is working to cut a nearly 20-foot tree into pieces, after it fell over on the front yard in the storm.
“It came out of nowhere. We just heard a loud thud and then the light went out. It took some cables down with it, so we’re not going to know what exactly happened until the electricity comes back,” said Christian Camarillo.
So for now, they have their generator ready, and are focusing their efforts on clean-up.
