Utahns mop up after vicious storms

Rocky Mountain Power crews and Salt Lake County cleanup trucks worked all night restoring electricity and clearing debris following Tuesday's vicious thunderstorms, which caused an estimated $13.2 million damage in Utah County.

"It was a very expensive 12 minutes," said Provo Mayor Lewis Billings.

Provoans swapped hair-raising stories Wednesday as dozens of families waited to return to their homes and 637 waited for power to be restored to theirs. Meanwhile, crews worked to clear trees, power lines and other debris from homes and streets and the East Bay Golf Course — 138 trees were down all over the course — and insurance adjusters began to descend on the city.

In Salt Lake County, the number of homes and businesses without power had dropped to around 300 late Wednesday, while all streets were cleared.

The county's debris cleanup is expected take three weeks. Some hard-hit streets in the Millcreek vicinity remained narrowed to one passable lane.

National Weather Service meteorologist Monica Traphagan said Wednesday the storm's highest recorded gust was 92 mph, gauged at the Provo Airport. The airport suffered extensive damage when planes flipped and hangars were torn apart. Earlier, the highest wind speed confirmed was 60 mph, with 70 mph inferred from radar images taken over Utah Lake.

The 900 residents and businesses still without power Wednesday were among an estimated 26,000 to 30,000 — most in east-central Salt Lake Valley — whose lights went out in Tuesday's storm. Snapped trees and limbs caused outages when they hit power lines.

"Some of the repairs we made yesterday are temporary in nature, and the temperature's coming back up," Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Dave Eskelsen said Wednesday. "We could have some trouble related to load (power use) and the heat."

Crews were mopping up the last of the outages. "We are up in the Millcreek area going through the isolated areas of damage," he said. These are "one or two customers here, a dozen costumers there." By nightfall, he said, the utility hoped to have everyone back on the grid.

But one category of repair is up to the customer to handle first: the power meter base. A mast from a home or business is used to carry a power line that comes in from a nearby pole. At the bottom of the mast is a power meter. If a tree hits the mast, it can wrench the meter off its base.

"We can't restore power until there's a sound meter base to connect to," Eskelsen said.