Utility crews, Salisbury firefighters and township public works crews were kept scrambling after a severe thunderstorm passed though the area late afternoon July 1.

Particularly hard hit were neighborhoods bordering the South Cedar Crest Boulevard corridor, with the Meadowbrook and Lindberg Park area experiencing severe damage from downed trees and limbs that took out power in some areas into July 2.

Homes were dark and traffic lights were still not functioning along the corridor at midnight when a report of smoke in a medical office building on the Cedar Crest campus of Lehigh Valley Hospital brought out a heavy response from Western Salisbury Volunteer Fire Department and fire units from Cetronia and Eastern Salisbury around 11 p.m.

The severe storm passed through beginning around 4 p.m., but in many cases trouble spots were being reported well after sunny skies had returned.

Western Salisbury firefighters responded to 21 calls between late afternoon and midnight with reports of wires down and arcing power lines, automatic alarms set off by power surges, medical emergencies and motor vehicle accidents, and a flash flood along Lehigh Street at the entrance to South Mall.

Many of the calls in the western fire district were being dispatched by the Lehigh County 911 center simultaneously, with firefighters using all five of the department’s vehicles responding to various neighborhoods. Units from Lower Macungie were called to respond to automatic alarms at nursing home facilities near the hospital while firefighters were fully engaged at the medical office building.

A midnight single-vehicle automobile accident with an injury at the intersection of Ott Street and Colorado Street also caused complications for emergency responders

Eastern Salisbury firefighters responded to 10 calls during the period, many of them with supplemental manpower to aid the overwhelming numbers in the western portion of the township.

Crews from the Salisbury Township Public Works department responded to the Meadowbrook area with heavy equipment to aid in opening streets blocked by downed trees and massive limbs broken off and lying in the roadway.

A Western Salisbury fire officer said many of the cases of trouble were occurring as PPL utility crews were restoring power to a neighborhood power feed only to have leaning trees and limbs grounded out and causing a new outage. As darkness fell, additional instances of leaning limbs and trees were hard to see as an initial trouble spot was cleared.