Vancouver's famous Stanley Park has lost more than 1,000 trees, after a series of storms battered the West Coast with near-hurricane force winds.

The devastation is so immense that the park's manager went up in CTV Vancouver's "Chopper Nine" helicopter to get a better sense of the damage.

"I can tell you that all the staff are pretty shook up about this whole thing," said maintenance supervisor Eric Meagher.

The clean-up is expected to take months, as crews cut down damaged trees, haul away fallen branches and clear roads.

While the east side of the park is now open to the public, the west side could remain closed for another week. Workers have yet to clear out any of the area's trails, which remain highly dangerous.

"Some trees were uprooted, some were broken, and some were hit by other trees. So it's a combination of problems," said Meagher.

Vancouver's Board of Parks and Recreation may consider using commercial logging trucks to help remove the trees and speed up the process.

One fallen hemlock tree was estimated to be more than 200 years old. Replanting could take years, and the park board is accepting donations from the public to help the renewal process.

"Hundreds and hundreds of trees were either uprooted or simply snapped off, by winds that were estimated to be at least 100 kilometres per hour, and sometimes gusting well beyond that," reported CTV Vancouver's David Kincaid, who surveyed the damage in Chopper Nine.

Stanley Park measures about 400 hectares and first opened to the public on Oct. 29, 1889. Perhaps its most unique feature is the 8.8-kilometre long Seawall, but the barrier was also damaged by the wind.

"The Seawall has been physically damaged, not just by trees lying on it, but large portions of the pavement scoured away by the waves," said Kincaid.

The brutal wind storm also created havoc on the city's annual Bright Nights in Stanley Park display. The event is organized by firefighters to raise money for burn victims.

Firefighters helped to restore the display through the weekend so it could open Monday.

The West Coast was hit by three major storms in total. David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, described them as "jumbo jets on the airport tarmac. You had one coming in right after another."

At one point, about 240,000 BC Hydro customers were without electricity.

Two elderly people in Burnaby, B.C. were discovered dead Sunday, the apparent victims of carbon monoxide poisoning that could be related to the power outage.

The RCMP found a generator along with the bodies of a 66-year-old male and 65-year-old woman.

The couple were living in one of the last areas of the Lower Mainland left without power in the wake of an extreme windstorm that hit Thursday night.

With reports from CTV Vancouver