Cleanup continues after powerful monsoon storms hammer Phoenix area

The Phoenix area continued cleaning up Friday morning after a powerful round of monsoon storms Thursday evening that knocked down power poles and trees and drenched some areas with nearly two inches of rain.

Linemen from utility companies still worked to upright a line of power poles that had been toppled along Shea Boulevard in Phoenix. The roadway was closed between State Route 51 and 40th Street for repairs.

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Fewer than 800 Arizona Public Service customers remained without power in parts of north Phoenix and in several communities west of Buckeye. About 430 Salt River Project customers scattered across the Valley were still experiencing outages.

Anyone trying to access the outage map on the APS website on Friday morning received this message: “Due to extensive storm damage APS customers are experiencing outages. We understand this is uncomfortable and we appreciate our customer’s patience as crews work around the clock to repair damage. We will be updating our map so please continue to check for status changes.”

Gina Squires said power had been out at her home near 40th Street and Becker Lane since 4:45 p.m. Thursday. An APS worker told her service may not be restored until Sunday, she said.

Most of her neighbors have left their homes to stay with family and friends, but Squires is staying put because of her dogs. 

“We love monsoon season, tho,” Squires said. “This is Arizona. This is what you get.”

The Phoenix Zoo was closed to the public Friday as crews made repairs and removed debris. Multiple trees were downed at the zoo, two tents were destroyed, and flooding left debris on several zoo trails.

All animals were safe and accounted for, Phoenix Zoo officials said. It wasn’t initially clear whether the zoo would be ready to reopen for business on Saturday.

According to Kerri Baumann, communications strategist at the Phoenix Zoo, most of the damage was in the zoo’s main corridor. 

“I think we’re still doing some assessments. We’ve obviously got the big damage you can see,” she said. “Staff will need to go through and assess maybe more hidden potential dangers, such as branches that have cracked, maybe haven’t fallen yet.”

Around the time the storm rolled around Thursday, many of the animals were already heading to their night houses. Baumann said none of the animals were hurt and their exhibits were not damaged.

“If there is a silver lining to this it was that … we closed at 2 p.m., so there were no guests on site,” she said. “It just so happened we had some staff and keepers still on site at about 5. So they were able, once the storm cleared, to go out immediately and assess damage, check the animals and make sure everyone was OK.” 

Most of the office staff members have assisted in the clean up effort, cutting trees and raking. 

“All hands are on deck for this,” she said. “Literally everyone is pitching in.”

Childsplay, a theater company in Tempe, had its power shut down after Tempe Fire suspects its building had been struck by lightning during yesterday’s storm. 

Anthony Runfola, director of production, said that Tempe Fire responded to their location around 7 p.m. after receiving a call that there were sparks coming out of one of its air-conditioning units. Runfola said Tempe Fire suspects that lightning struck the building and some water got into a junction box that feeds the chillers. 

“Basically what we have is this box that has a hole burnt through it, more or less,” Runfola said.

Arizona Public Service came and shut off the power for safety precautions which cut off internet, phone services and email service on the campus, Runfola said. Many employees were working remotely despite no access to company email or file servers hosted on site.      

“What we hope we can do is isolate the power to that chiller where we suspect it was struck by lightning so that we can turn on power … to the rest of the campus. And then we’ll have to figure out if there’s more damage to our chiller,” Runfola said. 

Runfola said they would hopefully have the power restored some time today, but it wasn’t likely there would be any air conditioning. 

Check back with azcentral.com for more details.

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