Cheshire Begins Clean Up; State Crews Answer Calls

The sun broke through the heavy clouds late Sunday afternoon, giving storm-weary neighbors a chance to gather on sidewalks and swap stories of Hurricane Irene. 

Across Cheshire, dozens of large trees were down and lawns were covered with leaves, twigs and debris.

The roots of a massive tree on South Brooksvale Road gave way in the saturated ground sending a three-foot diameter hardwood crashing onto the roof of the two-story home.

Wallingford Road was closed for at least four hours on Sunday afternoon in response to a downed power line that ran for about 20 feet along the road.

A detour kept vehicle traffic from the area while a Cheshire Police patrol car sat at the top of a hill to keep pedestrians away from the live electric line. A new state record for power line damage was set by Irene with about 750,000 outages.

Cheshire police reported power was out in several areas of town: Peck Lane, West Main Street and Wallingford Road. An emailed message said power was also out on Towpath Lane, Goldenrod Court and Iris Court around 3:30 p.m. Sunday

On Sunday morning, a large hickory tree located less than a block from Cheshire police headquarters, became uprooted and fell completely across Highland Avenue, closing the town's main road for several hours. 

State Department of Transportation crews removed the tree on Highland Avenue and trimmed a large broken limb from a tree on South Main Street which was lying across the north lanes of of the road. The road is also state highway Rt. 10.

With school closed on Monday, families will have plenty of time to remove the piles of twigs, leaves and limbs that blew down during the day-long storm