(Radio Iowa) – Thunderstorms have been rolling across Iowa bringing strong winds and heavy rain. Winds were clocked between 60 and 70 miles an hour in Sioux City in western Iowa just before midnight. Numerous power lines were knocked down by falling tree limbs.

Sioux City Fire Captain Ryan Collins says they did have to rescue two people from a home. “A tree had fallen into the house and the occupants were unable to get out on their own and crews were actually able to remove them off their deck using ground ladders and those occupants are being taken care of,” he says. Collins says they had some three dozen calls of trees down on power lines.

He says some neighborhoods were blacked out after losing power and that makes responding more dangerous. “The headlights of the apparatus is the sole means of elimination. It’s tough to see those black power lines that are laying across the road or even large trees that are completely blocking roadways,”Collins says. “A lot of times you’re not going to see it until you’re right up on it. And as always, we respond with caution but especially, you know, after storage, we have to have a little extra bit of caution. We just have to slow it down a little bit.”

Tree down after the storm in Sioux City. (KSCJ photo)

MidAmerican Energy spokesperson Tina Hoffman says line damage from trees can take longer to repair. “Our tree crews often have to get in first to clear away that debris before our line crews can get in and get to work with restoring service,” she says. There were some 1,300 customers without power as of 10 a.m. in Sioux City and Hoffman says they may not have all of the power back on until six this evening.

There were some 16,000 power outages in central Iowa right after the storm came through.