An electric/wind storm cut a swath through Muttontown on Sunday, July 1, that uprooted over 30 trees and resulted in electricity being lost for about 24 hours in the affected areas.

The damage in Muttontown started on Ironwood Road and headed northeast down Route 106 to Midland and Edge Roads and across to Hunter and Woodlea and on to Cecilia Drive. Muttontown Highway Commissioner Raz Tafuro said it looked as if it then headed east to Split Rock Road and Berry Hill Road.

Tafuro saw the storm as it zigzagged through the village. "The dancing winds were doing the tarantella," said Raz. The tree damage was mainly along the roads.

Barbara Tutunjian agreed it was the huge winds that caused all the damage. On Midland Road, a large tree growing on her property snapped off and fell down, but luckily missed her house by several feet. She said she saw a neighbor out in the rain using a chain saw to take down another tree that was blocking the road.

"Thank goodness there was no loss of life or limb," said Tutunjian, who disagreed with reports that called the event an electric storm. "An electric storm stays in one spot not in a million spots at once. Also there were no burns on the trees - nothing," she said. "Channel 2 said it could have been a tornado."

Commissioner Tafuto said LIPA and Asplund (working for LIPA) pay loader trucks flooded the roads as they started to pick up knocked down wires and chop down and move fallen trees Sunday evening.

Luckily, the damage happened along the roads of the village, which is mostly zoned two acres. Two cars parked on Cecilia Drive narrowly missed disaster when a tree came down between the parked vehicles. On Sterling Court, a one-month-old car was hit and damaged by a falling tree. Inside Mrs. Ejaz' house, they heard the tree coming down. The sprinkler system and fence were also badly damaged. On Monday, they were waiting for the landscaper to come and begin the work to cut down the tree and free the car. LIPA and the village take care of the roads and the residents take care of the storm damage on their own property.

On July 1, the north shore of Long Island was hit with very severe thunderstorms that started about 3:30 p.m. The first segment hit the Brookville, Syosset, Muttontown and Huntington areas. Later, around 5 to 6 p.m. the second phase hit Suffolk County. Overall for that weather system, there were approximately 30,000 outages Islandwide, said Bert Cunningham, VP LIPA Communications.

He said the storm broke poles, cross arms and knocked out wires; it did quite a bit of physical damage to the system.

The storm, he said, was reported in excess of 50 mph, with some saying it reached to 60 mph. "You go to 75 mph and it is hurricane territory.

"The electric storm, was very violent," he said.

"We had the bulk of the outages restored by midnight in all but 5,000 on Sunday night. By 7 a.m all but 1,700 were restored. There was significant damage in Muttontown where poles and powerlines were brought down and needed to be rebuilt. In places we were reconstructing an entire segment of the lines," he said.

"The final handful of customers was restored in the more severe areas a little before 6 p.m. on Monday evening," said Cunningham. "Then for the next couple of days there were storm related outages, with a branch coming down and taking out a handful of people here and there."

He also explained that the system itself can take a lightning strike and wipe out a portion of the system and also weaken the line along the way. And a line can suddenly fall down and that can later be traced back to when it was weakened in a lightning strike.

"We did sustain a number of lightning strikes in substations," he said. "It's powerful stuff."

He suggested there is more information on their Internet site at www:Lipower.org.