Some Maple Valley families face long day of storm cleanup, another night of power outages

MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. - It was a long day of clean up after the windstorm knocked down power lines and trees, which in turn damaged some people’s homes.

In Maple Valley, Heidi Cook was fully expecting to go to work on Wednesday morning. She works as a paraeducator in the Tahoma School District, but instead, she spent the entire day clearing debris from her roof and property.

School officials also decided to close the school in Cook’s district because of the windstorm’s aftermath.

"It woke us up about 12:30 night with a big crash because a tree had fallen across the road, hit our roof and broke our skylight in our kitchen," said Cook. "Some of the cupboard doors had opened up and glasses had fallen out and broke."

The fallen tree had also damaged the power lines. First, workers with the City of Maple Valley came by to cut the tree down and remove it.

Utility workers with Puget Sound Energy also went through the neighborhood and restored power for some families.

However, the Cook’s were still in the dark by dinnertime, relying on their camping lanterns to light the way inside their home after a long day’s work of clean up.

"We had to replace the skylight, we had to sweep up debris all over the yard and remove the logs from the tree that fell down. We had to clean the glass off our kitchen floor," said Cook.

On Wednesday night, Cook’s neighbor’s generator was whirring loudly with candles flickering inside. Neighbors were taking their evening walks with flashlights in hand.

The neighborhood is right by Pipe Lake, and according to Puget Sound Energy’s Outage Map and it was still deemed "To Be Determined" under restoration times.

"I just hope everything’s okay for everybody else. We’ll all just get through it," said Cook.