With so much concrete debris, residents were doing their best to create a path to get vehicles out of driveways and along the road. It looked as though it was going to be a long process.

Sunday’s blistering winds with speeds near 70 mph set off an extremely angry Lake Erie that splashed violently against the city shores. Branches and floodwaters also ripped through Point Gratiot, benches and garbage bins were overturned at the City Pier on Sunday night.

The damage was extensive in the city, but crews are taking inventory and have begun cleanup. “The caps were pushed out, some into private residences,” Mayor Wilfred Rosas said in regard to the retaining wall pieces that have lain in the roadway over a year now. “The contractor we hired is down there right now cleaning up things. The cost shouldn’t be impacted as most of the blocks that were damaged we were looking to replace anyways.”

At the pier benches and trash cans were uprooted from where they had been cemented into the ground.

The retaining wall along Lake Erie saw even more damage as blocks littered Lakefront Boulevard. OBSERVER Photo by Jo Ward

“We lost some benches and receptacles we think,” Rosas said. “We think they may have blown out into the lake. The ones that broke free will be gathered up and stored for the winter before being put back up next year.”

As for Point Gratiot the flooding was extensive. “Crooked Brook’s levels were very high Sunday night and the Point saw large amounts of flooding,” Rosas stated. “The point is under the supervision of the Parks Division and they’re down there right now getting the damage inventoried and cleanup began.”

Residents in southern Chautauqua County also received the wrath of the weather.

Even a day after “one of the worst wind storms” she’s ever experienced, that’s the only way Julie Conklin and her husband could describe the sight of their Panama cabin laying on its side as a result of the nearly 70 mph gusts that swept through Chautauqua County on Sunday.

“We live about three miles from the camp and the cabin,” the Ashville resident said. “We were just getting ready to go down to the basement at our house and we called my step-mother who lives just in front of our campsite so she could see that some of our stuff had blown over. She said it felt like her own house was going to come off the foundation.”

Debris of sticks and branches litters a closed entrance to Point Gratiot in Dunkirk. Photo by M.J. Stafford

“We’re just still in awe that it actually must have picked it up because it was 10 feet from where it sat on its foundation,” Conklin said. “Next to our cabin we have our RV and we have an RV port. It’s supposed to withstand the 100 miles wind and it actually bent. It’s leaning toward where the wind was blowing toward it.”

Conklin and her family had their power restored by 7 p.m. on Sunday, but hundreds of residents across the county still had yet to have power restored as of Monday afternoon.

National Grid reported nearly 100 outages on Monday that have left roughly 1,700 customers without power — many of which are not expected to have power restored until Tuesday afternoon.

In Jamestown, Board of Public Utilities communications coordinator Rebecca Robbins said that crews were expected to be working until midnight on Monday to address various isolated outages in neighborhoods across the city and service area.

The cause for these later repairs has mostly been fallen or uprooted trees that have brought down lines and utility poles.

“Crews are working through a list of these remaining localized areas,” Robbins said. “City and private tree crews also cut away trees in order for BPU linemen to work to bring back power.”

The power went out around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday minutes after the “major weather event” and outages were reported throughout the city, West Ellicott, Celoron and Falconer. There has been no estimate as to how many customers were affected by the isolated outages.

As for damages done to private residences that were affected by the storm, the costs are unknown.

“It’s probably close to one of the worst storms, as far as wind goes,” said Conklin. “The wind was bad. I’ve never seen the trees bend like they did.”

Cameron Hurst contributed to this story