MOUNT VERNON — “It really looks like a hurricane went through here,” Joe Spence of East Hamtramck Street said Sunday evening as he watched neighbors cleaning up debris from trees in the street and in yards. Around the corner on North Park Street, scene tape blocked traffic from turning down the street. Large trees and power lines lay in the street, and a huge tree leaned against a house and vehicle where it had fallen at the height of the storm.

“It sounded like a freight train,” said Mount Vernon resident Eleanor Haas of the sound the maple tree that crashed into her house at the corner of West High and South Adam Street made as it cracked and fell. “I didn’t know what it could have been.”

Robert Doyle, who lives next door to Haas, said he came to check on the occupants of the home, which included a disabled man.

“He said a tree branch landed a foot away from his head,” Doyle said.

Tracy Messer shook his head at the sight of the large tree crushing part of the roof of his home.

“My mother wanted to cut down those trees 20 years ago and the city wouldn’t let us do it,” he said.

Lt. Jay Laymon of the Mount Vernon Fire Department said the department checked the house to make sure there was no fire danger.

“Nothing is burning, so we will try to help the homeowner,” he said.

The MVFD responded to several calls about electrical lines arcing and sparking. On Coshocton Avenue, before the worst of the storm hit, callers reported large white balls of bright light traveling down a power line, accompanied by loud noises.

Fifteen-year-old Frankie Munday captured video of the bright light on her cell phone.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “It sounded like fireworks and there was all this white light.”

Laymon and members of an engine company kept an eye on the wires, which continued to arc, as they waited for an American Electric Power crew.

“It looked like a big ball of light running down the light,” Howard resident Bev Roscoe said as she and her husband sat in the Medicine Shoppe parking lot. The Roscoes said they called 9-1-1 after seeing the flashing lines from across Coshocton Avenue.

As the storm intensified, trees began falling with increasing frequency. A large maple tree on East Vine Street demolished the 1985 Isuzu pickup owned by Bobby Osteen as it collapsed into the street. The tree also buried a small white car owned by the neighbor across the street.

“It sounded like thunder,” Osteen said of the cracking of the tree trunk. Officers with the Mount Vernon Police Department and firefighters taped off the area to keep onlookers from walking near the scene.

As he watched firefighters examining nearby power lines that also were in the street, Osteen pointed out a squirrel still sitting in the tree where it lay in the middle of Vine Street.

Eighteen-year-old Harley Filyaw of Mount Vernon faced a close call on South Norton Street, when live power lines snapped and fell onto his car.

The young man described a fire ball and loud explosion as he opened his car door. He quickly closed the door and stayed in his vehicle while the MVFD responded.

Assistant Chief Chris Menapace and MVFD squad personnel stayed with Filyaw and his vehicle for over an hour while an AEP crew responded to the scene to shut off power to the line.

“He was safe as long as he stayed inside the vehicle with the door closed,” MVFD Chief Shawn Christy explained.

As the storm died down later in the evening, many residents who had no electricity in their homes gathered on sidewalks to survey the damage and check on one another.

Neighbors helped move branches from the road, while some with chainsaws helped with larger tree limbs.

“Just wait until the morning,” Spence said with a smile. “That’s when the real cleanup work will start.”