Storm knocks out power, downs trees in Imperial County

IMPERIAL COUNTY, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - Imperial County felt the strong storm Sunday night, leaving hundreds of locals without power and knocking down several trees.

According to the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), Westmorland and Holtville had the most power outages.

That's more than 1,000 customers without power.

The Holtville fire chief said they received a gas leak call at 2 a.m.

When they arrived, they found a transformer blown up, leaving the west side of Holtville with no power.

A family in Imperial said their tree of 25 years was struck by lighting, cutting the tree in half.

The tree broke one of their windows and damaged their car.

“I actually thought that a car crashed through our living room or something like that because that is how loud it was and I feel like I can kind of feel a little bit of the electricity in the air but I was just like, I thought it was an earthquake at first but I realized like oh wow. I think that was a lightning strike. I have never felt one before so that was insane," explained John Ricks, an Imperial County local.

IID said it's still working on restoring power to some areas in Brawley.