OSO — Darrell Hunt and his granddaughter narrowly escaped his burning truck Monday night when a tree and power lines fell on the vehicle.
Monday night’s windstorm slammed Island and Snohomish counties with an unexpected fury, causing power outages, road closures and several close calls.
It was raining hard when Hunt stopped by a friend’s house to pick up his 3-year-old granddaughter, Echo. By the time he pulled his GMC pickup onto Ramstad Road, headed for Highway 530, it was pouring buckets.
An Arlington school bus driver, Hunt was about to turn east for home in Darrington when he decided to wait out a big gust of wind and the blinding rain. A few seconds later a big spruce fell across the hood of the truck. Before long, there was a fire. Hunt used his cell phone to call his friends Jason and Charity Prueher, who had just sent him on his way. The Pruehers are Oso firefighters. They alerted the rest of the fire department.
“I could see little blue flashes of light so I knew the power line had come down with the tree,” Hunt said. “I pulled Echo from her car seat and we started praying. I pulled blankets over our heads because the fire was getting bigger and the smoke was getting bad.”
Oso fireman Gary Moffett arrived and broke out the back window of the truck. Hunt handed him the little girl and Moffett pulled Echo from the cab. Hunt escaped the truck just before it exploded. The truck’s canopy, Hunt’s cell phone and Echo’s car seat melted.
“Gary risked his life,” Hunt said. “We’re thankful to be alive.”
Monday’s storm could prove to be a mere glimpse of what weather forecasters predict will be a foreboding winter. Another storm is building off the coast, promising more wind and rain. Forecasters say there’s even a chance of snow for the higher hills by the weekend.
PUD workers scrambled to restore power to homes and businesses Tuesday after gusts reached 40 mph in parts of the region Monday night. By Tuesday afternoon, about 7,000 Snohomish County PUD customers still were without power, down from a high of about 25,000 Monday night, officials said.
Higher winds and rains are expected to kick back up today. Expect south winds of 15 to 20 mph, with the possibility of gusts reaching around 40 mph. That could be coupled with lowland rainfall of up to an inch.
Harold Main, 67, called Oso a veritable tornado alley around 9 p.m. Monday. More than 10 Douglas fir trees slammed into the yard he shares with his niece and her family. One clipped Main’s mobile home. Another took the gutter off his niece’s house.
“The trees went down like dominoes,” Main said. “The wind just roared through here.”
Kevin Lenon, a volunteer firefighter in Darrington, described a treacherous drive home along Highway 530 Monday evening. He was returning from a training drill at an Arlington Heights fire station when he drove past Hunt’s rescue.
At four different spots along the highway, Lenon saw several sparking wires brought down by falling trees. There was rumbling thunder, too, along with flashes of lightning. He drove slowly with his windows down so he could hear any cracks from trees that might fall over the roadway.
“We were chasing the storm up the valley,” he said. “I was really nervous driving home.”
The storm also left its calling card in Granite Falls, where stranded drivers spent the night in their cars along the Mountain Loop Highway. They waited 15 hours for Public Utility District crews to move a downed power pole, power lines and a big Douglas fir.
Christine Hamm, 32, was on her way home from a swing shift at Boeing when she was stranded around 1 a.m.
“I got a couple hours of sleep in my car, but I really want to get home to take a shower before I have to go back to work,” she said late Tuesday morning.
Dozens of people parked their cars at the fish ladder east of Granite Falls, skirted the fallen power line, and hiked into town. Some carried gas cans. They were buying fuel for the generators keeping the lights on at their homes.
Elsewhere along the South Fork Stillaguamish River, Keith Johnson was cleaning up after his rambler was hit by a neighbor’s Douglas fir tree.
Johnson, 46, had a giant hole in the roof of his family’s kitchen and dining room in their house on 119th Place NE.
He and his wife and their pregnant daughter opened the front door to watch the storm around 9 p.m. Monday. That’s when a Douglas fir toppled in the neighbor’s yard and bashed through the Johnsons’ roof. Cupboards flew open, windows shattered. The impact sounded like a bomb exploding.
“By the grace of God, no one was hurt,” Johnson said.
The season’s first storm caught many people off guard, said Christian Davis, battalion chief for North County Regional Fire District Authority.
“If this is just the start, I’m am concerned to see what the rest of winter will bring,” he said. “Hopefully, this storm will be a wake-up call for people to be prepared.”
North Snohomish County was hit harder than the south, but the outages were scattered throughout the region. There were more than 200 calls to fire districts in the north end of the county overnight.
A few hundred students in the Granite Falls School District missed school because of the storm.
The South Whidbey School District closed all schools Tuesday because of power outages. The Coupeville and Darrington school districts started late.
Herald writers Andy Rathbun and Noah Haglund contributed to this report.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
