Downed power lines and trees lined almost every block in some neighborhoods, causing commuters to have to find detours and area businesses to close.

As of 6 pm Thursday, 10,480 customers are without power. Penelec crews were out in full force, but restoration times are unclear.

“Twelve fifteen, last night, looked outside and it was apocalyptic; it was scary,” said Sandra Sarroll, an Erie homeowner.

Depending on where you were wednesday night, you could hear and feel the thunder, and if you lost power like over thousands of others, the bright lightning was the only source of light.

 City of Erie declares state of emergency over storm damage 

“When did your power go out?” we asked. “Middle of the night, exactly at 12,” said Colton Anthony Russell

“Is like the whole neighborhood experiencing that too?” we asked.

“Actually, like, the whole area over here,” he answered.

After his neighborhood was ravaged by the storm, Russell got the day off from school and spent it doing yard work.

“I’ve been helping out, like here, over there a little bit. I took care of a tree over there with this,” he said.

“We were cleaning up a little bit of the damage; my neighbor has some tree damage in the back. We have no trees so thank goodness, but what’s really sad is the cemetery; that’s the worst. It’s very heartbreaking,” Carroll told us.

 Erie County officials respond after overnight storm damage 

Over at the Erie Cemetery, all grounds staff, including those from their other locations, were out assessing the damage

“Erie Cemetery has 200-300 year old monster trees and many of those trees are actually uprooted out of the ground,” said David Rinderle, the Erie Cemetery executive director. “When you look in our cemetery and see all of our monuments, and headstones and things like that, there’s a lot of headstone and monument damage as well.”

Rinderle said the cemetery will remain closed for at least until Friday, as they do their best to repair the grounds.

Although utility poles and branches lined the driveway, the Erie Zoo was still able to open their doors to the public

“We are very grateful that, thankfully, a lot of the damage from the storm that we had was has been outside our gates, so it’s only affecting our lower parking lot,” said Hali Hartley, the Erie Zoo PR lead manager. “Our horticulture team came in early this morning once they were seeing what the storm was like and they came in and cleaned up and was making sure all the debris was gone out of the walkways and clearing any walkways so that they could be accessible for everyone.”

Until Penelec is able to fix the broken power lines, their lower parking lot will remain closed until further notice.

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