A powerful windstorm Monday night and early Tuesday morning knocked out power across the region, including residential areas of Auburn, Pacific and Algona.
Fallen trees and limbs shut down a section of the Auburn-Black Diamond Road as crews worked to clear debris and restore power. Downed trees and power lines forced closure of the road between 148th Avenue Southeast and Southeast Lake Holm Road. The Auburn-Enumclaw Highway also closed.
“I know power came on in Pacific about 4:20 a.m. on the east side of the tracks and at 5:25 a.m. on the west side,” said Pacific Mayor Richard Hildreth. “I know of no major problems caused by the storm. As we all saw last night, it is important to be prepared.”
About 90,000 Puget Sound Energy customers from Whidbey Island to South Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula were without power as of 8 a.m., Tuesday, By 6 p.m. most of the remaining outages were limited to Thurston and Pierce counties and to south King.
“One-hundred-forty-thousand customers lost power during the storm across our entire service area,” said Lindsey Walimaki, a representative for Puget Sound Energy. “It really hit Island County and Skagit County hard. Among the areas hit the hardest were Thurston, Pierce and South King counties. Right now, we have restored power to 110,000 out of the original 140,000 customers, so we have just under 30,000 customers left without power. And that number is dropping.”
Walimaki said PSE had 85 crews working Tuesday evening, including some from British Columbia, Oregon and Idaho.
“We’re working our hardest to get the power back on as quickly as possible to our customers,” Walimaki said. “We expect that most customers in Skagit, Kitsap and North King will have their service restored by Wednesday morning. And then we hope to restore electrical service to most of our customers in Pierce and Thurston counties by Wednesday night. “
As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, 961 PSE customers in Auburn were without power.
Abigail Elliott, a PSE spokesperson, said at 11 a.m. Wednesday that most of the power had been restored.
“All of the outages related to the windstorm are in the final stages of restoration. We’re getting the last hard-hit areas,” Elliott said.
