Scattered power outages, falling trees and mounting snow kept road and power crews busy in pockets throughout Clallam County on Monday.
A second straight day of snowy weather continued to weigh down powerlines and tree branches, causing havoc in remote areas of the county.
Repair crews from three Eastern Washington public utility districts that helped local crews restore power during a windstorm earlier this month are back, doing the same in the wake of the snows.
“We’re hoping that [today] we’ll get everybody back on, but then we hear about new storms coming on,” said Clallam County Public Utility District General Manager Doug Nass.
“We’re working around the clock to get everybody on.”
The number of customers without power was estimated at “several thousand” and included areas stretching from Joyce-Piedmont Road and Freshwater Bay to Mount Pleasant and Deer Park roads east of Port Angeles.
Lake Crescent and Lake Sutherland customers were also without power, some since the snowstorm began Sunday morning.
Other affected areas included Dry Creek and Lower Elwha, O’Brien Road, Monroe Road, Mount Angeles Road, Four Seasons Park, Black Diamond Road and numerous areas along state Highway 112.
East End outages
In the eastern part of the county, outage areas included Happy Valley, Taylor Cutoff Road, Barr Road and Lewis Road.
Clallam PUD serves 27,000 electricity customers throughout unincorporated Clallam County plus incorporated Forks and Sequim.
Port Angeles has its own electric utility.
Nass said unincorporated Port Angeles was hit heavy while the West End was spared the brunt of the storm.
He said power should be restored for the Joyce area by midnight Monday, but the Joyce-Piedmont Road, Lake Crescent, Deer Park and Mount Pleasant areas won’t see electricity until today.
The three repair crews coming from the Chelan, Benton and Franklin public utility districts were expected to start pitching in Monday afternoon.
The crews helped Clallam PUD workers restore power knocked out by windstorms during the week of Nov. 13-17.
“They will help us a lot,” Ness said Monday afternoon.
“Later Monday evening, we’ll send our crews home and they will take over. A lot of people are going to be out until [today],” he said.
Telephone lines clogged
Many PUD customers reported difficulty in reporting outages.
Nass said the district’s 23 telephone lines were “pretty much overloaded.”
In Port Angeles, Public Works Director Glenn Cutler said a majority of the city’s electricity customers had power restored by Monday afternoon except for a few isolated areas.
“All the city’s substations up and running except for may be a few isolated homes that doing best to get to,” Cutler said.
“Citizens have been very understanding. Our crews are upbeat and morale is good.”
