Powerful storms wrought havoc across a swath of Connecticut Tuesday, causing widespread power outages in the hardest-hit areas.

In Litchfield County, downed trees crashed onto vehicles, power lines, homes and roads.

Some residents say the weather terrified them.

"I just saw water and wind," says Pamula Scott, of Winsted. "The trees were flying onto the power lines. Sparks and flames. I was scared."

Erin Latimer says she grabbed her daughter before huddling in their basement. She emerged later to find the siding shorn off her house. Another tree fell on her neighbor's car.

"You can see the wind stripped the bark off of dozens of trees," she says.

Once the storm passed, so many branches had fallen in the neighborhood's roads that Walter Benedict says he grabbed an axe and started chopping them out of the way.