By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – About 8,000 Clallam PUD customers lost power after the worst of Friday night’s windstorm had passed. Today that number is less than 100, but the PUD’s Nicole Hartman says there’s a new problem that’s keeping those very tired crews busy still; heavy wet snow in higher elevations.
“Yeah. And 38 of those are up Mount Pleasant Road, which this morning we got a report of a pole on fire and lines down. And so, the crews de-energized that particular section, but they have not been able to start addressing it because it’s too dangerous. They said there was whiteout conditions up there and that there were still trees falling. We’re still getting calls coming in of lines and branches and trees coming down.”
In Sequim, Public Works Director Sarah VanAusdle described the efforts of her crews this weekend as “heroic”, working through the night in dangerous conditions, clearing downed trees amongst downed power lines, and working all night after having worked a full day. She says it’s going to be some time before cleanup is complete, with the city losing about 30 street trees, and she says trees in Carrie Blake Park and Pioneer Park were hit especially hard.
Interim Public Works Director Mike Healy says the City of Port Angeles fared better than much of the county in terms of outages.
“Well, we had roughly 2100 to 2400 out at the height of the outage. Most were back in service by very early morning on Saturday. But yeah, we’re back up and running and we’re doing a little cleanup today, of course. But yeah, we’re back, with well over 99%, if not all of our customers, served, except for those waiting to hire an electrician to reconnect their house.”
We asked Healy if Port Angeles lost many of our street trees, like they saw in Sequim.
“I think what we lost are our leaves. It was great (laughs). I think all City trees got a good dusting, and a lot of the leaves came down a little prematurely. But one thing I will say is, you know, we got a great opportunity to bring our emergency response out for a test drive, and between the Light Ops and Public Works and Police and Fire and other departments, they all worked seamlessly together. It was great. It was a good, concerted team effort.”
(City of Sequim photo from Sarah VanAusdle)