Strong winds knock out power, trap national park visitors in western WA
Seattle - Seattle City Light crews were restoring power to some of the last remaining customers affected by outages Sunday after a wild night of weather on Saturday.
"Just super windy," said Caila Nickerson, whose power went out Saturday and Sunday. "The lights flickered on and off."
For those who live near Seattle's Judkins Park, like Caila and her dog Beanie, the wind started to pick up between 8:00 and 9:00 pm on Saturday.
Neighborhoods Face Outages and Downed Branches
What they're saying:
"The trash barrels were like rolling around and some branches down, it was pretty wild," said Caila.
"She doesn’t like the loud weather noises, so she just cuddled up," Caila said about her dog Beanie.
Caila's power went out at around 8:00 pm. Half of her neighborhood experienced an outage.
"We have a 6-year-old so glow sticks and little candles and stories in bed so it was fine," she said.
Olympic National Park Roads Blocked by Fallen Trees
Dig deeper:
Strong winds and heavy precipitation also swept across the Olympic Peninsula, causing outages and road closures in places like Olympic National Park.
The National Park Service said places like the Hoh Rain Forest, Sol Duc, Lake Crescent and Kalaloch were impacted. The NPS says fallen trees blocked upper Hoh Road and partially blocked others. Five cars were trapped between the downed trees. Park crews got upper Hoh Road open by 1:30 pm on Sunday.
"We had a lot of trees down, water on the roadways," said Katherine Imboden, Eastside Fire and Rescue Public Information Officer.
Eastside Fire and Rescue says it was one of the first wind advisories of the season and places like Mercer Island took a hit.
First Responders Urge Storm Preparedness
What you can do:
"We just want to make sure we remind people: never drive over power lines, those lines could be active and hit your undercarriage, stay at least 2 power poles back from where a line is, call it in and have it handled professionally," said Catherine Imbowden of Eastside Fire and Rescue.
Catherine Imbowden says ahead of more wind and wet weather, refresh your communication plan, have extra blankets ready, charge or stock up on batteries, and if you use a backup generator, keep it outside and positioned away from windows and doors.
"Nothing went bad in the fridge or anything in that amount of time, so the house was fine," said Caila.
Caila's power came back on at around 3:45 am, but says she's preparing for the next round of fall wind and rain.
"All the flashlights are the ones that you charge, and so we don’t have them charged," she said. "We should probably get flashlights that have batteries and charge the ones that don’t."
The Source: Information for this story came from original reporting by FOX 13 Seattle reporter Jennifer Dowling, who spoke with Washington residents who were dealing with power outages on Sunday, along with officials for the Eastside Fire and Rescue, Olympic National Parks, and Seattle City Light.
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