A one-two punch of howling windstorms and heavy rains left at least three people dead and more than 1 million homes and businesses without power across Western Washington early Friday.
In Snohomish County, 79,000 people were without power just before 9 a.m., many school districts were closed, and an Edmonds nursing home was evacuated after a tree crashed through the roof. During the height of the storm, as many as 120,000 people were without electricity in Snohomish county.
Wind gusts of up to 66 mph knocked trees and limbs into power lines all over Snohomish County and Camano Island, said Mike Thorne, a utility spokesman.
“We have outages scattered throughout the county,” Thorne said. “It looks like south Snohomish County was hit pretty hard.”
Thorne said the utility was sending a helicopter up to survey the damage at about 9 a.m.
The PUD had nearly 50 crews out working on getting the electricity back on this morning, Thorne said.
The peak wind gust at Smith Island, off the west coast of Whidbey Island, was 73 mph about 2 a.m. today.
One woman died after being trapped in the flooded basement of her Seattle home, while falling trees killed two others.
The Evergreen Point floating bridge across Lake Washington east of Seattle remained closed early Friday and numerous other highways were blocked because of high water or windblown trees. The Hood Canal floating bridge and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge were reopened early Friday after being closed Thursday evening.
About 50 residents of Sunrise Assisted Living of Edmonds were evacuated after a tree came crashed through the third floor about 2 a.m., knocking out the fire main and flooding the building, Snohomish County emergency management officials said.
Residents were sent to other facilities operated by Sunrise in the area, many to one in Snohomish where employees were working through a power outage. No injuries were reported.
Hazardous material shipments were prohibited on Interstate 5 through Seattle and on some other major routes because of power outages, and one of the concourses and the south satellite terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were without electricity. Airport spokesman Robert Parker said he expected some flights to be canceled.
In Seattle, firefighters cut a hole in the floor to pull Kathryn Fleming, 41, out of her flooded windowless basement after neighbors heard her screaming that she was trapped, but she was pronounced dead after being taken to Harborview Medical Center.
“Somehow, the door shut, and she couldn’t open the door because of the water pressure,” Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said.
In Pierce County, Harold J. Fox, 47, of Eatonville, was killed Thursday when a tree fell on his vehicle on State Route 7 near Roy, the Washington State Patrol said, and a woman died and her husband was critically injured when a tree fell on their pickup truck after they stopped because of fallen trees southeast of McKenna.
About 700,000 customers of Puget Sound Energy, the state’s largest private utility, were without power early Friday and about three-fourths of the circuits were down in the company’s nine-county service area, spokesman Roger Thompson said.
The hardest hit area was King County, which includes Seattle, where drenching rain accompanied the first wallop as the storm hit Thursday afternoon, slowing commuters to a crawl. The winds picked up again around midnight.
“That second one is when we saw the greatest number of outages, after midnight,” said Dorothy Bracken, a Puget Sound Energy spokeswoman.
Repair crews were waiting for the winds to subside after daybreak before beginning to assess the damage and restoring power, and some are likely to be in the dark for three she said.
“They’ve been defeated in doing that because of the continued strong winds … they never died down,” she said. “It’s just not safe.”
Puget Sound Energy already had 50 to 60 two- and four-person repair crews from areas as far away as California and Nevada for a total of more than 180 crews primed to begin work following an earlier, less damaging wave of storms that hit Wednesday.
Outages from the earlier storm were all fixed before the one began Thursday, and the extra crews were kept rather than sent home, Bracken said.
Even with the outside help, though, some customers won’t have their lights back on for days, he said.
Some of the outages were caused by lightning, an unusual circumstance in the Puget Sound region.
As the storm system passed over the region, “we’ve had some embedded thunderstorms that dropped impressive amounts of water,” said Dennis D’Amico, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
Winds gusted to 74 mph at the Hood Canal floating bridge, which links the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas, 63 mph at the Evergreen Point floating bridge, one of two linking Seattle with the suburbs east of Lake Washington, 70 mph at Westport on the coast and more than 50 mph in downtown Seattle.
Rain drenched Qwest Field in Seattle shortly before the NFL game between the Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers, leaving standing water on the field. About half an hour before kickoff, a power surge briefly knocked out electricity to the large video screens at each ends of the stadium.
Nearly an inch of rain fell in one hour at the weather service’s north Seattle office. A record rainfall of 2.17 inches was set in Seattle for the date, breaking the old record of 1.24 inches on Dec. 14, 2002.
In the 24 hours ending at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, the Weather Service said the Mason County city of Shelton recorded 2.19 inches of rain, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport received 1.09 inches, Olympia had 1.53 inches, Hoquiam on the coast had 1.83 inches, and Maple Falls in the Cascade foothills east of Bellingham had 1.46 inches.
The Coast Guard closed a number of river bar entrances on the Washington coast including the Columbia River, Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay and the Quillayute River entrances meaning vessels could not cross the bars without permission.
“The bars will remain closed until search-and-rescue capabilities are restored,” the Coast Guard said in a news release.
East of the Cascade Range the same storm system battered the northcentral part of the state with high winds and heavy snow.
More than 10 inches of snow fell by late Thursday night in Okanogan County, where widespread power and telephone outages were reported and cellular phone service also was down in many areas. The entire Methow Valley was dark, and the sheriff’s office in Okanogan switched to emergency generators for a time.
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