DALLAS — Trees tower over homes in Dallas' M-Streets neighborhood – so when severe weather strikes, people who live here know the drill.
“It’s the price you pay for living in an area with beautiful trees,” Cindee Dobbs said.
Since 7 a.m. Monday, Dobbs has been helping neighbors move debris to the end of driveways. Hums of chainsaws and utility company vehicles could be heard from blocks away after swift winds, large hail and heavy rain scattered limbs and branches across properties on Sunday.
The damage is what many woke up to across the metroplex on Monday.
Dobbs has lived in the M-Streets neighborhood near Lower Greenville since 2001. In her backyard, a historic tree is regularly trimmed and has branches cabled together to protect it from North Texas weather that threatens it.
“This tree is over 100 years old,” Dobbs said of her elm tree.
She said she feels the pressure to maintain it because of its beauty and length of life in her neighborhood. Over the weekend, Dobbs worried the high wind gusts would be too much for the tree.
“We need the rain, but we don’t really need any more wind right now,” Dobbs said. “We need to be able to clean this up first.”
Clean-up efforts across the metroplex were in full swing.
Andrew Dumas with S.W.A.T Professional Services said they’ve been responding to damaged property calls since late Sunday evening.
“Broken skylights, broken windows, windows busted out of cars,” Dumas said. “A lot of the damage was very, very bad.”
Dumas’ team assess damage. He said they’ll be out from sun-up to sun-down.
“We’re very cutting edge technology with what we’re able to do and what we’re able to provide our customers,” said Dumas. “But, I mean, there’s just not enough of us to go around.”
Dumas said despite being so busy, it's best for people who experienced storm damage to get on a waiting list with a repair company immediately and ahead of the next round of storms.
Utility companies also have boots on the ground, spending the day restoring power to customers and securing power lines.
As of 6 p.m. Monday, there were still more than 2,000 outages, according to Oncor.
Both Dobbs and Dumas said they are bracing an active severe weather season during the next few months. Another chance of storms is set for North Texas in on the horizon.