TEMPE, AZ — After Wednesday night's storm, homes, apartments, and even Marcos De Niza High School sustained damage.
A spokesperson for the Tempe Union High School District says a restoration company is on-site and crews have been cleaning up debris.
Classes will not be delayed or affected although no one will be allowed into the auditorium until it is structurally assessed.
At one Tempe home near University and McClintock drives, a tree split and part of its branches fell onto the roof, puncturing through the ceiling.
Homeowner Scott Kern said he and his wife were getting ready for bed when they heard the rain pounding and thunder cracking. Kern told ABC15 it sounded like a plane crashed into the house.
"It was very scary. My wife started screaming and crying. We thought the front window had blown out, but there was no glass. We realized it was drywall from the roof, from the ceiling had come down to hit the ground," he continued. "We looked up and saw this big branch through our roof right by the TV. It scared the crap out of us."
In Mesa, renters Elias Castellano and Killin Shearl's units flooded.
Castellano had just gotten home around 11:30 p.m. to see all the water inside his place. He said the ceiling leaking fried his computer and Xbox.
"It was a lot of rain, lot of dust. I didn't sleep much last night, three hours maybe," he said.
For Shearl, he was home and sleeping when the storm rolled through. He woke up to the storm and saw water coming from the ceiling.
"I just started grabbing stuff, trying to - so it doesn't get flooded or broken electronic and what not, just trying to get water out," he said. "Couldn’t really do much, so I just had to sit there until the rain was gone and was scooping out water."
In Chandler, crews spent Thursday working through the city's parks, where officials say almost every park took some kind of hit. Trees came down, and shade canopies above playgrounds were ripped apart.
Neighbors across the Chandler area are dealing with damage as well. One homeowner in Sun Lakes heard a loud thud and found an uprooted palm tree on top of her roof and AC unit.
About 20 minutes east, Maximo Reynoso walked outside to find a downed tree branch blocking his front yard and part of the street. He says the city will remove it, but Thursday morning he was number 60-something on the list.
"It's funny we're always begging for rain, and when we get it we're like yes, but then we forget that when nature gets angry, it gets angry and it's unfortunate this happened. I mean, it happens to a lot of people you never thought it's gonna happen to you until it does," Reynoso said.
Parks Superintendent Brandon Putman says the cleanup will take time. There is no full count yet on trees lost, but Chandler had already lost about 58 trees this year before the storm.
Putman says that number could double or triple.
The city is asking for patience as crews work through the damage.
In one piece of good news, the Chandler Center for the Arts, which sustained roof damage last week, took no new damage in Wednesday night's storm.
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