Hundreds of Imperial Valley residents were still without power Tuesday afternoon after heavy rains from a monsoon storm washed through the desert region a day earlier, toppling power poles and cutting off electricity for thousands of homes.

The Imperial Irrigation District (IID) said more than 4,000 customers from Bombay Beach on the north end of the Salton Sea to Calexico in the south reported outages late Monday and early Tuesday. IID is a public utility and the Imperial Valley’s main power and water provider.

IID spokesperson Robert Schettler said that the agency had brought many of those homes back online. But on Tuesday afternoon, he said crews were still working to restore power for close to 400 customers, many of them in Brawley and Calexico.

Schettler said the agency was facing

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