In Tucson, hundreds of residents spent Saturday cleaning up and assessing damages caused by strong monsoons that tore through the city on Friday afternoon.
The eastside of Tucson was among the hardest hit areas.
“It sounded like a tornado coming,” said Chris Sanders, a resident at Langley Garden Condos.
The Friday monsoon brought strong winds, hail, and heavy rainfall, resulting in power outages and leaving debris scattered throughout the city streets and neighborhoods.
Sanders remarked, “This is the strongest I’ve ever seen since I lived here.”
Unfortunately, at least thirteen units were damaged by fallen trees, forcing some residents to evacuate.
“It turned a weird hazy orange, got super quiet, and then it started and it hit like a freight train,” he said. “I mean, it sounded like a bullet coming through your house.”
Sanders recounted that he was on his patio when it all unfolded, and fortunately, his condo was spared, and no one was injured.
“I stepped around the corner, I saw the other three trees that were down so I immediately got a jacket and a hat and I went down to make sure everybody else was okay,” Sanders recalled.
In a neighborhood just a few minutes away from Langley Gardens, a family was displaced on Friday after their roof sustained damage, allowing water to flood in.
KGUN 9 spoke with the homeowner, Albert Vargas, on Friday and caught up with him again on Saturday.
He mentioned that this incident marks his second financial hit in as many weeks, following a setback with his prosthetic leg.
“Just last week I was off of it because I had broken some parts in it, so that kind of hit me financially, and now this,” Vargas explained.
His main priority on Saturday was to cover the top of the house with a tarp until it can be replaced.
“The electricity is okay. I was really surprised with the way it was pouring through,” he said. “But most of our damage is sheetrock, and of course, our couches and the bedding took some losses like that.”