Crews and residents were busy cleaning up after a spring storm wreaked havoc in and around the Capital Region Wednesday.

City crews were clearing about 900 fallen trees and branches from roads and trails Thursday, while many homeowners were doing the same on their own properties.

In Devon, Cory Martin was busy Thursday helping to clean up, after a 60-year-old Elm tree fell dangerously close to his home.

“Sounded like thunder at first and I looked out, it’s like ‘Oh my!’” Martin said.

The tree took out the phone line, and crushed part of the chain-link fence, but Martin knows the damage could have been much worse.

“[The tree] came down across, so another so another 10 feet [towards the house] and it probably would have went into the kitchen right? So lucky the wind was just that way,” Martin said.

A few blocks away, the roots of a tree pulled up the corner of a lawn when winds blew it over.

In Edmonton, wind gusts of up to 100 kilometres per hour tore the roof off of a south side building, interrupting photo day at the Dance Academy.

“It almost sounded like they were dropping a big garbage bin or something outside of the building,” Marilyn Lloyd, who was inside when the building’s roof came off, said at the time.

Everyone inside the building managed to evacuate.

The storm caused about $100,000 of damage to that building, and crews said it could take weeks to repair the roof.

Throughout the day Thursday, crews were working to cut down problem trees, and clearing branches and debris from roadways and paths in the river valley.

“We haul things like chainsaws with us so a lot of it is hard work, where required we bring in the big aerial trucks from forestry for the bigger trees that are down,” Juanita Spence with the City of Edmonton said. “It’s a process.”

Trails were open by the end of the day, but the city is urging trail users to keep an eye out for trees in the coming days and watch out for trees that could fall.

The full cleanup is expected to take several days, and it’s not clear how much it will cost.

With files from Jeremy Thompson