Wind gusts as high as 45 miles per hour caused an inundation of 911 calls about power lines, downed trees and outages across Long Beach Tuesday evening.

“We’re getting lots of calls for wires down, wires in trees, arcing wires,” said Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Matt Dobberpuhl.

Photo by Valerie Osier.

The high wind storm event caused nine outages, impacting about 7,400 customers across the city, according to Southern California Edison spokesman Reggie Kumar.

“Our crews will be working through the night to safely restore power as quickly as possible,” Kumar said. He also cautioned residents to stay away from downed power lines.

Wind caused a large tree limb broke off onto a truck in the Trader Joe’s parking lot in Bixby Knolls on April 9, 2019. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Smith.

Wednesday morning, hundreds of people were still without power, according to SoCal Edison’s website.

No injuries have been reported so far, but the department did receive a report of a large tree limb that broke off and landed on a car in North Long Beach, according to Dobberpuhl.

Signal Hill Police Department issued an alert to residents Tuesday night advising of the high winds.

“Bring down umbrellas in backyard. Be aware of flying debris and down power lines,” the alert read.

Winds were expected to slow down in the Long Beach area Wednesday with gusts topping out around 25 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

Editor’s note: This story was updated with more accurate outage numbers from Southern California Edison. 

Valerie Osier is the Social Media & Newsletter Manager for the Long Beach Post. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ValerieOsier