Damage done, Prairie Village-area residents begin pick up after storms

The Porter Park storm debris drop off for Prairie Village residents saw heavy traffic on Sunday.

Prairie Village and Fairway residents ended up spending plenty of time in the lawn this weekend. They just didn’t get to work on the projects they probably had planned.

Two days after the first of consecutive powerful storms hit the area, nearly 300 area residents were still without power. Stop lights along Roe Avenue and Mission Road, from 71st Street north to 63rd Street, were still not functioning properly, with temporary four-way stop signs set up to control traffic.

A veritable parade of pick-ups pulled in and out of the Porter Park parking lot Sunday, as homeowners and landscapers unloaded truck bed after truck bed full of felled branches. By noon Sunday, the pile of branches was taller than most of the people dropping them off, and just getting bigger. The drop off area will be open until 3 p.m. next Friday, Aug. 26.

But those homeowners who got away with a few downed branches can consider themselves lucky. A drive through the neighborhoods just west of 63rd Street and Roe Avenue, the epicenter of the storm’s intensity where winds reached 100 miles per hour, revealed widespread damage that in many cases will require the removal of entire trees:

The remains of a utility pole felled by the winds last week.