The mourning after

By JESSICA MAYRER and AMANDA RICKER Chronicle staff writers

Leaves and branches still littered downtown streets Wednesday as foresters, technicians, city employees and homeowners tackled the aftermath of a pair of thunderstorms that sent 85 mph winds and golf-ball sized hail through town the day before.

ALTON STRUPP/CHRONICLE Bob Rydell rakes fallen limbs and leaves out of the grass and on to a Alderson Street sidewalk on Wednesday. “Now I’ve just got to pick it all up,” Rydell said. “It’s been a hectic morning,” Craig Helbine, from the Bozeman Tree Service, said Wednesday. The company received at least 20 calls overnight. And as homeowners woke to survey the damage, the calls kept coming.

In a backyard at Fifth and Lamme streets, foresters were cleaning up the remains of a massive, 75-year-old spruce that toppled in the storm, taking a fence, phone and power lines with it. Holes in the home’s red brick exterior marked where the PVC pipe enclosing power and phone lines were once attached. Thick, gnarled roots were left exposed as the spruce landed on the neighbor’s adjacent yard.

The guys from the tree service planned to put in another 12-hour day today.

“There’s a sense of urgency,” Helbine said Wednesday.

Nearly 2,000 residences lost power in Tuesday’s storm, said Pat Patterson, a spokesman for Northwestern Energy.

“It was a doozy,” he said.

As of Wednesday afternoon Patterson estimated that 150 homes remained without power, most of them north of Belgrade. Five Northwestern Energy crews from across the state were in the Bozeman area Wednesday, helping local electricians work through the night to restore power. Patterson said they hoped to have everyone back on-line by Wednesday evening.

Bob and Sidney Reed live on Nelson Road and didn’t have power at their ranch where they graze 80 head of cattle until around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday n about 22 hours after they lost it. It wouldn't have been so bad except that they use an electric pump to provide water for their cows, Sidney Reed said Wednesday morning.

Still, going nearly 24 hours without power in mid-July was a bit difficult for some.

“I know these Northwestern Energy guys are working really hard,” Bob Reed said Wednesday. But “it’s not minor for those poor old cattle that we had to haul water to today.”

The storm also overwhelmed Bozeman’s wastewater treatment plant Tuesday night, requiring officials to call in three off-duty staff members to help process the extra storm water, Public Works Director Debbie Arquell said.

The 5.8 million gallon plant saw an influx of about 13 million gallons that night, she said.

The Bozeman Fire Department responded to 17 calls related to the second, more-severe storm, keeping firefighters busy into the wee hours, said Jason Shrauger, operations chief for the department.

Halfway through the evening, he called in four off-duty firefighters to staff a third fire engine and assist the seven on-duty firefighters, himself and the emergency manager.

The fire department responded to downed trees and power lines alongside city police, water, sewer, street, forestry and sign department staff. Each department communicated via radio.

“It’s organized chaos,” Shrauger said. “You respond to the calls as you get them, life-saving is number one and after that is property conservation.”

In central Bozeman Wednesday, city foresters, concentrated on cutting dangling branches out of trees before they could land and do more damage, said Ryon Stover, the city’s forester.

Stover worked until about 10 p.m. Tuesday pulling downed trees and branches to the sides of roadways. Employees from other city departments are helping, too, he said.

Most of the damage he’s seen, so far, he said, is on the south side of Bozeman in the older part of town. But the strangest thing, he said, is a spruce that landed straight up and down on the sidewalk.

“I’ve been in this business for a long time and I’ve never seen a tree land perpendicular to the ground,” Stover said.

Stover expects to have most of the big stuff cleaned up by tonight, he said. But the calls will likely continue trickling in.

“It’s still early, sometimes it takes people a while to look up and realize there’s something awry,” he said.

John Alston, superintendent of the water and sewer departments, said Wednesday that city staff were ready when the storm hit, thanks to a National Weather Service prediction that was within five minutes of the storm’s actual arrival.

“We knew it was coming,” Alston said. “We were staying right on top of it.”

Across town at Sweet Pea’s Nursery employees were tending to bruised flowers and sweeping up after the storm. The perennials got hit hard.

“It looks like somebody put them through a shredding machine,” Sweet Peas’ owner Elissa Zavora said.

Her trees, too, were tossed around in the storm.

“It must have really ripped in from the west,” Zavora said. “The west-facing trees got hit pretty hard.”

Falling branches also took out windshields, sun roofs and home windows all over town.

“About 7:30 this morning the phones went off the hook,” said Jason Lambecht from Onsite Auto Glass. “It’s just been crazy all day long.”

Lambecht estimates that by Wednesday afternoon, he had fielded 20 to 40 calls from people with branches that had impaled automobile windows.

But people seem to be keeping a sense of humor through all of the broken glass, he said. “Everybody’s just in awe. We haven’t seen a storm like this come through Bozeman in forever.”

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