Power outages darkened Valley during storm last week

 

November 24, 2021



Last week’s local flooding and storm conditions were bad. Still, as anyone who was here in 1990 can attest, it could have been worse.

Far worse.

Then, Rexville Grange was converted to an emergency staging area for National Guard members called in to provide relief on Fir Island, which witnessed mass evacuations after a 40-year-old Skagit River dike broke, inundating the area.

Fast forward to last week and impacts from relentless rain and high winds in and around La Conner and Skagit County were again severe and stressful, but less so than was the case 31 years prior.

“If you haven’t done so, be sure to thank your dike and drainage commissioner,” Washington State University Skagit County Extension Director Don McMoran said in a public social media post last Tuesday. “The system isn’t perfect, but things are so much better than in 1990.”

Town of La Conner Administrator Scott Thomas concurred, noting that Skagit dike districts closely monitor their infrastructure during flood events, lessening the chances of unexpected and catastrophic levee failures.


That’s not to say effects – and in some cases, hardships – weren’t felt this time around, too.

For instance, Marissa Conklin, the Weekly News sales representative, a Bow resident, had to hail a ride in a canoe to flee her flooded home.

“My fiancé and I had to canoe through the flood waters so we could leave our house,” she said. “Our landlord picked us up from our backyard in the canoe and paddled us to the dry part of Chuckanut Drive. My fiancé and I had to take turns being in the canoe, so we didn’t tip it over from our weight. I held my dog on my lap!”


Once they reached dry land, the couple was picked up by Conklin’s father.

Dealing with high water for hours on end got to be too much, she said.

“We didn’t want to stay at my house anymore,” said Conklin, “because we needed to go grocery shopping and my dog needed more space to go to the bathroom.”

Meanwhile, farmers on Fir Island were forced to hastily move equipment, the Rexville Grange became a John Deere parking lot. Low-lying rural roads were closed to through traffic; surging, choppy water from Swinomish Channel lapped repeatedly onto a south end La Conner sidewalk; parts of Dodge Valley near the Skagit River’s north fork resembled lakefront property; and high winds across Swinomish Reservation downed trees over power lines, causing extended outages.


Gusts over 50 mph nearly toppled a semi-truck on Deception Pass Bridge. The teetering rig eerily came to rest against the span’s railing.

Emergency responders and those tasked with restoring power were put to the test round the clock.

A crew from British Columbia working non-stop to fix power outages in western Skagit County enjoyed a brief respite Thursday, taking in a meal at the La Conner Pub & Eatery before starting another 24-hour shift.

As during last February’s windstorms, many La Conner businesses and residences went extended periods without electricity.


changing images of vegetables

“We’ve been closed with the power outage,” Waterfront Café co-owner Marla Vallee, in the midst of planning the downtown restaurant’s annual community Thanksgiving Dinner, told the Weekly News Nov. 10, “but we got the word tonight that the electricity is back on.”

Others shared similar plights.

Pam Fields of La Conner Coffee was loaned a generator from neighboring business The Ginger Grater so she would have electricity to run her ice cream freezer.

“Gregg Westover from The Ginger Grater brought his generator from home and hooked it up to my ice cream freezer,” Fields said. “We ran the generator for an hour or so and then packed ice around the tubs and put blankets over all of it.

“When my power came back on Wednesday afternoon I went down to the shop and checked the ice cream,” she said. “Some of the tubs were soft but after sitting in the freezer with it running overnight all of the ice cream was okay. I was pretty happy because I had 20 tubs of ice cream in the freezer and I’d really hate to lose all that ice cream.”

Power was restored on a staggered rather than uniform basis, with La Conner area residents not having electricity taking shelter temporarily with local friends or relatives whose power was already restored.

Puget Sound Energy officials this week were still trying to determine the exact number of La Conner households and businesses that had service interrupted during the storm. Early estimates put the number at nearly 2,000, again similar to what was reported in February.

“We typically report based on our storm base areas in which we have the totals for the Skagit area,” PSE Customer Communications Manager Jarrett Tomalin said Monday afternoon. “With this past storm, it looks like we had a total of 6,837 customers at one time in the Skagit area. For La Conner, specifically, it may take a little more time to gather.”

The hope is it will also be some time before La Conner and Skagit County see a storm like this one again.

Tuesday at x the Skagit River measured 2x feet at the Mount Vernon gage, well below the Phase 1 28 feet flood stage.

 

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