La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Fall roared out of the Salish Sea region with winds of up to 60 mph last Thursday, darkening all or parts of Island, Kitsap, Skagit and Whatcom counties served by Puget Sound Energy. In La Conner, the windstorm came without rain.

About 1,600 greater La Conner residents were among the 120,000 people in Skagit County without electricity for up to 18 hours. La Conner lost power at 11:05 a.m. The lights returned in Town at 6:49 p.m. It was 2:22 a.m. before power was restored in Shelter Bay and southwest Fidalgo Island, according to resident Mark Stephens.

Christie Eichler, The Scone Lady, had just put a batch of cookies in her electric oven when the lights went out. Pioneer Market stayed open, running one register on a gas powered electric generator. Cashier Kendra Bare powered through, taking cash only, penciling items on paper bags and figuring totals on a hand calculator. Staff fetched items for customers, using flashlights to navigate aisles in the dark.

Anelia’s Matt Farrell ran to Haggen’s in Burlington for dry ice, to no avail: power was out there and the store closed. Traffic was at a crawl, with traffic lights out on SR 20. It was a two hour round trip.

The Mount Vernon Haggen’s was open, however, as that section of the county was not affected.

MaryRose Denton completed two massages she was giving in Burlington by candlelight before calling it a day.

Alan Mesman’s cows were fine: his tractor generated power, keeping equipment running. That freed him to cut fir and maple trees down across his uncle and aunt’s 790 foot driveway on their Pleasant Ridge property leading to Valentine Road.

The hum in the middle of town was the Frontier generation station at Morris and Third Streets. The light on its porch was the only one in town cutting through the early evening gloom at 4 p.m.

At 12:15 p.m. Swinomish police officer Steve O’Rouke put traffic cones across Snee Oosh Road west of Swinomish Avenue, closing it to traffic. A tree was down, leaning across power lines just east of Fire District 13’s station. A Douglas fit tree over Snee Oosh closed the other end eight-tenths of a mile from Reservation Road. That tree forced a three vehicle Skagit County public works crew to turn back because it was beyond their chipper’s capacity.

Pioneer Market stayed open until about 7:30 p.m. Manager Barry Whipple estimated the heaviest flow of customers was around 12:30 p.m. Batteries and ice were the big sellers.

“We stay open for the town,” Whipple said. “Sean [Skiles, owner] is pretty passionate about it.”

Friday Whipple said no food was lost, but that Skiles stayed until 11:30 p.m. to get everything back together.

The east side of Snee Oosh Road was open by 2:30 p.m. Friday, according to Fire District 13 Chief Roy Horn.

Power was restored to the last 11,500 Skagit County PSE customers by 6 p.m. Friday, estimated Janet Kim, PSE spokesperson. At its height, 226,000 customers were without power. The heaviest damage to lives and equipment was in Kitsap, Island, Skagit and Whatcom counties, Kim said.

“We experienced damaging winds through the PSE region with gusts up to 60 mph and had crews working through the night,” Kim said.

On Dec. 24, PSE staff estimated all customers affected by the storm would have electricity by the end of that day.

In the region, Interstate 5 was closed near the Bow Hill Road exit and the Department of Transportation closed Deception Pass bridge, both for several hours. The Anacortes ferry to the San Juan Islands was delayed due to the weather, navigating along storm routes and staffing problems.

PSE reported 405 Pleasant Ridge customers lost power the previous Saturday night, at about 8:30 p.m. for eight hours, until the downed pole on Best Road was repaired. That loss was a harbinger of Thursday’s outage.