Crews with Dowagiac Public Services hit the streets in full force Tuesday cleaning up the damage left in the wake of the severe thunderstorm that shook the city Monday night.

More than 100 city residents lost power to their homes as a result of damage to power lines caused by the high winds, said City Manager Kevin Anderson. Several areas were impacted by these outages, including residences around Willard Street and Riverside Drive, as well as those on Gray Street.

“Overall, we wouldn’t say this was a huge outage, but for people living in the areas that are affected, it’s a big deal,” Anderson said. “We’re working on getting those homes restored as soon as we can.”

By noon, all but one residence in the Willard area had power restored. The city was working on restoring power to Gray Street, though fallen lines in the backyards of some homes made the project more difficult, Anderson said.

Crews had been working since the early hours of the morning to clean up fallen foliage, some of which had caused minor blockages on city streets. Anderson said these obstacles were cleaned up by 9 a.m.

“We get on these things fairly quickly, and we take care of them in a timely manner,” Anderson said.

Though several downpours have hit the region in recent weeks, this is the first one to cause substantial damage to the city’s power lines, the city manager said.

“This was the first power outage we’ve had in a quite a while,” Anderson said. “We have a very strong record of reliability in our system. We had virtually no outages in recent storms, only a few customers for a few hours.”

While several large trees fell during the storm at Riverside Cemetery and other locations, no major damage to residential or business properties were reported to the city, Anderson said.

“We know where the areas are, we know what the problems are and we have the crews working on them,” he said. “I’m confident we will get everything taken care of in a timely manner.”

Homeowners with large tree branches and other debris caused by the thunderstorm can leave them in a pile near the curb, where road crews will take them for disposal. Residents can also take debris to the compost area located behind Rotary Park.