The phone at Columbia Water and Light kept ringing long after the last rumble of thunder. Streetlights faltered, water poured everywhere and tree limbs fell on powerlines as city workers scrambled to fix the problems.

"Outages can be very tricky to fix sometimes," said Connie Kacprowicz of Columbia Water and Light. "One of our major outages that we saw in the Georgetown area, we got one tree off the line, thought it was fixed and tried to turn the circuit back on and found another tree down on the line."

On the city's far west side, the Village at Cherry Hill leases to doctors, restaurants and shops. Most of the businesses were without power for six hours Tuesday. However, the Rosewood building, which houses Cherry Hill Dental Associates and other businesses, had full power as a result of their installation of lightning arrestors several years ago.

Most of the businesses at the Village either rescheduled appointments or stopped work altogether. But one movie store still provided its customers with what they needed. Bob Coy, the store's manager and chief improviser, said business took a minor hit, but it was nothing compared to the neighboring businesses.

"Make do the best we can, hand out flashlights as they come in the store," Coy said. "Help them out where we can, let them know where things are."

The Columbia City and Light Department says that by 3:00 p.m. Tuesday all but 150 of its customers had their power back on. The City of Columbia offers to cut down trees that may fall onto powerlines.