Thunderstorms and lightning knocked out power throughout a large part of Safford and set two palm trees ablaze Thursday evening and lit up the night like a Fourth of July celebration in the process.

James Bryce, a utilities electrician with the city of Safford, said lightning was the likely cause of a blown transformer fuse that needed repair. His office received a call about 10 p.m., and he said the city of Safford employees restored power to most of the city by 10:30 p.m. Several homes had power back on about 20 minutes later.

Bryce said most of the same people who were without power Aug. 2 after a car crashed into a utility pole were without power Thursday night. The number of power outages, however, has not been abnormally high for the amount of recent storm activity, according to Bryce.

Safford firefighters put out fires in the tops of palm trees on 12th Avenue that were struck by lightning Thursday night. Photo by Jon Johnson

“The power system has held up quite well,” he said.

Thursday evening was an especially intense storm.

“It was one of the worst lightning storms we’ve seen in some time,” Bryce said.

Two palm trees at the 2500 block of 12th Avenue also caught fire after being struck by lightning.

The Safford Fire Department was called to the scene about 10:25 p.m. Strong winds out of the northeast blew embers from the trees into neighbors’ yards. The embers also caused significant damage to two cars in the vicinity after burning paint and other parts of the vehicles.

“It took about 45 minutes to put out the palm trees,” Safford Fire Chief Mike Rhodes said.

Other than the two cars that were damaged, the fire didn’t spread anywhere else.

“It was raining, so everything was pretty well saturated,” Rhodes said.