Gorham Public Works officials say they have nearly completed cleaning up the town after a brief but severe storm July 18 downed trees and left nearly 9,000 people in the Gorham and Standish areas without power.

Crews have been working 50-hour weeks since the storm, said Bob Burns, the town’s director of public works. The crews should be finished cleaning by the end of this week or the beginning of next week, he said, with work still left to be done on Dunlap Road and at Shaw Park.

The town does not know yet how much the cleanup will cost, but Town Manager David Cole said a 1996 storm cost the town nearly $100,000 in cleanup efforts.

“I haven’t sat down and spoken with Bob (Burns) yet to determine the costs,” Cole said. “I’m hoping those were just high costs and we don’t get to those numbers.”

Burns said he doesn’t know the final cost either, but he estimates the public works portion could be between $30,000 and $40,000.

Gorham was unsuccessful in applying for emergency funds through the state.

If cleanup costs exceed the $100,000 range, the town might need to dip into the $30,000 contingency account to pay for it, Cole said.

Scarborough loaned Gorham a front-end loader and Portland loaned the town a pulp truck. Independent Gorham contractor Tim Chick also loaned the town a pulp truck to enable workers to remove debris.

Burns said he didn’t know if this was the worst storm to hit Gorham, but he had never seen as many tree blowdowns from previous storms.

The storm also threw a wrench in the public works department’s day-to-day business, Burns said.

“It certainly was a change of pace,” he said. “Normally this time of year we’re performing relatively minor projects around town, replacing pipes and reditching. Then this storm hit and we had to refocus our efforts in a hurry.”

The heavy winds, which exceeded 50 mph, were blamed for damaging a Central Maine Power transmission structure near Route 237. The hardest hit areas in the town were Shaw Park, Longfellow Road and Little Falls, Cole said.

Cole said that after the 1996 storm, residents unloaded all their debris at Public Works Drive. This year, however, they were dropping off soft wood, but keeping the hardwood, he said.

“People are looking at higher fuel costs this winter,” he said. “They’re holding onto the hardwood to burn.”