The gusting winds that hit the Bay of Quinte area Saturday night kept area firefighters busy.
On Saturday, Environment Canada issued a wind warning which forecast gusts of over 100 kilometres an hour throughout the night.
When the winds swept in, so did calls to firefighters according to Quinte West Fire Chief John Whelan.
He said that Quinte West firefighters responded to 14 calls for service, all for downed trees with some of them taking down power lines with them and catching fire.
Whelan said that at one point the Belleville Fire dispatch, which dispatches across the Bay of Quinte area, was so overwhelmed with calls that the Quinte West detachment took over its own dispatching to alleviate the volume.
He said that the public works department was busy as well removing trees and putting up barricades in affected areas.
In Belleville there were no specific numbers on the number of calls that were received but it was also a busy night.
According to a dispatcher with Belleville Fire the calls started rolling in at approximately 5 p.m. and persisted until around midnight.
There were no reported injuries in either Belleville or Quinte West and all the calls were for hydro lines downed by falling trees.
In Prince Edward County calls began around 6 p.m. according to a dispatcher with Prince Edward County Fire.
The southern area of the county was especially busy due to strong winds coming off the lake.
Crews were out at calls for downed lines and trees from the evening on and the last crew returned from Wellington at approximately 5:30 a.m. Sunday.
There were also no reported injuries in Prince Edward County.
According to Hydro One’s outage map there are numerous outages across the Bay of Quinte.
Most notably, there is an outage affecting a large swath of land ranging from the 401 at Wallbridge Loyalist Road up to Cooke Road north of Stirling, west to Glen Ross Road and east to Zion Hill affecting over 5,000 customers with an expected restoration time of 4 p.m. on Sunday.
An outage from Point Anne to Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory is affecting just over 600 customers.
Over 2,000 customers in Frankford and Stockdale are experiencing an outage which is also expected to be restored by 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Hundreds of customers in the areas of the Little Bluff Conservation area, Cressy, Waupoos East, Bethesda and Adolphustown in Prince Edward County are experiencing outages with no estimated time of restoration.
The City of Belleville announced Sunday morning that it will open its Leaf and Yard Waste Depot at 75 Wallbridge Cescent from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in light of the debris strewn about by the wind.
For further information on outages you can visit the Hydro One and Elexicon Energy outage maps.
The information in this story is current as of 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 12.